Deep Search for Joint Sources of Gravitational Waves and High-Energy Neutrinos with IceCube During the Third Observing Run of LIGO and Virgo

TL;DR

This work conducts a comprehensive archival search for joint gravitational-wave and high-energy neutrino emission during LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's O3, including sub-threshold GW and HEN candidates. Using a model-driven Bayesian framework (the LLAMA-based approach) and a population analysis with ${\rm TS}_{\rm pop}$, the study combines GW localizations, SNRs, and IceCube neutrino reconstructions within a $\pm$500 s window to test for shared astrophysical origins. No significant GW+HEN coincidences are found, but the analysis places 90% upper limits on the rate density of joint sources and on the neutrino energy budgets, indicating that detectable joint emission would require very high $E_ u$ for isotropic scenarios or substantial beaming. The results underscore the current neutrino-detector limits on multimessenger constraints for CBCs and emphasize the crucial role of next-generation detectors and real-time, worldwide multi-messenger collaborations to realize future discoveries and constrain jet dynamics in compact mergers.

Abstract

The discovery of joint sources of high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves has been a primary target for the LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and IceCube observatories. The joint detection of high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves would provide insight into cosmic processes, from the dynamics of compact object mergers and stellar collapses to the mechanisms driving relativistic outflows. The joint detection of multiple cosmic messengers can also elevate the significance of the common observation even when some or all of the constituent messengers are sub-threshold, i.e. not significant enough to declare their detection individually. Using data from the LIGO, Virgo, and IceCube observatories, including sub-threshold events, we searched for common sources of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos during the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Our search did not identify significant joint sources. We derive constraints on the rate densities of joint sources. Our results constrain the isotropic neutrino emission from gravitational-wave sources for very high values of the total energy emitted in neutrinos (> $10^{52} - 10^{54}$ erg).

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Joint sky localization showing all neutrino candidates coincident with GW BNS candidate at GPS time = 1262142545.615. Neutrino #6 gives the dominant contribution to the significance.
• Figure 2: Cumulative distribution of the $p$-values from the CBC part of the analysis. The orange line is a reference for uniform distribution.
• Figure 3: Joint sky localization showing all neutrino candidates coincident with GW burst candidate at GPS time = 1241247887.938. Neutrino #3 gives the dominant contribution to the significance.
• Figure 4: Cumulative distribution of the $p$-values from the cWB part of the analysis. The orange line is a reference for uniform distribution. The discrete behavior at the right side is due to cWB sky localizations not having smooth probability distributions, most of the sky possessing exactly zero probability.
• Figure 5: 90% upper limits on GW+HEN source population for different CBC source types as a function of the total neutrino emission energy from each source. We assume identical neutrino emission characteristics for sources with an $\epsilon^{-2}$ spectrum. The GW related properties are according to the injections which were guided by the O3 inferences PhysRevX.13.011048. The upper limits are shown for isotropic neutrino emission with solid lines and for a beamed emission with a beaming factor of 100 with the dashed lines. The rectangular regions described by dotted lines correspond to the estimated rate densities of the corresponding GW sources after O3 with 90% credibility PhysRevX.13.011048.