IceCube as a Multi-messenger Follow-up Observatory for Astrophysical Transients

Understand

The recent association between IC-170922A and the blazar TXS0506+056 highlights the importance of real-time observations for identifying possible astrophysical neutrino sources.

• Thanks to its near-100\% duty cycle, 4$\pi$ steradian field of view, and excellent sensitivity over many decades of energy, IceCube is well suited both to generate alerts for follow-up by other instruments and to rapidly follow up alerts generated by other instruments.
• Detection of neutrinos in coincidence with transient astrophysical phenomena serves as a smoking gun for hadronic processes and supplies essential information about the identities and mechanisms of cosmic-ray accelerators.
• In 2016, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory established a pipeline to rapidly search for neutrinos from astrophysical transients on timescales ranging from a fraction of a second to multiple weeks.