Search for Astrophysical Neutrino Point Sources at Super-Kamiokande

Understand

It has been hypothesized that large fluxes of neutrinos may be created in astrophysical "cosmic accelerators." The primary background for a search for astrophysical neutrinos comes from atmospheric neutrinos, which do not exhibit the pointlike directional clustering that characterizes a distant astrophysical signal.

• We perform a search for neutrino point sources using the upward-going muon data from three phases of operation (SK-I, SK-II, and SK-III) spanning 2623 days of live time taken from April 1, 1996 to August 11, 2007.
• The search looks for signals from suspected galactic and extragalactic sources, transient sources, and unexpected sources.
• We find interesting signatures from two objects--RX J1713.7-3946 (97.5% CL) and GRB 991004D (95.3% CL)--but the signatures lack compelling statistical significance given trial factors.