Limits on the high-energy gamma and neutrino fluxes from the SGR 1806-20 giant flare of December 27th, 2004 with the AMANDA-II detector

Abstract

On December 27th 2004, a giant gamma flare from the Soft Gamma-ray Repeater 1806-20 saturated many satellite gamma-ray detectors. This event was by more than two orders of magnitude the brightest cosmic transient ever observed. If the gamma emission extends up to TeV energies with a hard power law energy spectrum, photo-produced muons could be observed in surface and underground arrays. Moreover, high-energy neutrinos could have been produced during the SGR giant flare if there were substantial baryonic outflow from the magnetar. These high-energy neutrinos would have also produced muons in an underground array. AMANDA-II was used to search for downgoing muons indicative of high-energy gammas and/or neutrinos. The data revealed no significant signal. The upper limit on the gamma flux at 90% CL is dN/dE < 0.05 (0.5) TeV^-1 m^-2 s^-1 for gamma=-1.47 (-2). Similarly, we set limits on the normalization constant of the high-energy neutrino emission of 0.4 (6.1) TeV^-1 m^-2 s^-1 for gamma=-1.47 (-2).

14 pages, 3 figures

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Magnetars: the physics behind observations
• Search for gravitational wave radiation associated with the pulsating tail of the SGR 1806-20 hyperflare of 27 December 2004 using LIGO
• High-energy neutrinos from astrophysical accelerators of cosmic ray nuclei
• A First Search for coincident Gravitational Waves and High Energy Neutrinos using LIGO, Virgo and ANTARES data from 2007
• Time-Dependent Searches for Point Sources of Neutrinos with the 40-String and 22-String Configurations of IceCube
• Search for Galactic PeV Gamma Rays with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• Multimessenger Science Reach and Analysis Method for Common Sources of Gravitational Waves and High-energy Neutrinos
• The High Energy Budget Allocations in Shocks and GRB
• Gamma-ray Astronomy with Muons: Sensitivity of IceCube to PeVatrons in the Southern Sky
• High Energy Neutrino Telescopes
• Diffuse high energy neutrinos and cosmic rays from hyperflares of soft-gamma repeaters