Search for Neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande Associated with the GW170817 Neutron-star Merger
Authors: Abe K. , Bronner C. , Hayato Y. , Ikeda M. , Iyogi K. , Kameda J. , Kato Y. , Kishimoto Y. , Marti Ll. , Miura M. , Moriyama S. , Nakahata M. , Nakajima Y. , Nakano Y. , Nakayama S. , Orii A. , Pronost G. , Sekiya H. , Shiozawa M. , Sonoda Y. , Takeda A. , Takenaka A. , Tanaka H. , Tasaka S. , Yano T. , Akutsu R. , Kajita T. , Nishimura Y. , Okumura K. , Tsui K. M. , Labarga L. , Fernandez P. , Blaszczyk F. d. M. , Kachulis C. , Kearns E. , Raaf J. L. , Stone J. L. , Sulak L. R. , Berkman S. , Tobayama S. , Bian J. , Elnimr M. , Kropp W. R. , Locke S. , Mine S. , Weatherly P. , Smy M. B. , Sobel H. W. , Takhistov V. , Ganezer K. S. , Hill J. , Kim J. Y. , Lim I. T. , Park R. G. , Li Z. , O’Sullivan E. , Scholberg K. , Walter C. W. , Gonin M. , Imber J. , Mueller Th. A. , Ishizuka T. , Nakamura T. , Jang J. S. , Choi K. , Learned J. G. , Matsuno S. , Amey J. , Litchfield R. P. , Ma W. Y. , Uchida Y. , Wascko M. O. , Catanesi M. G. , Intonti R. A. , Radicioni E. , Rosa G. De , Ali A. , Collazuol G. , Ludovici L. , Cao S. , Friend M. , Hasegawa T. , Ishida T. , Ishii T. , Kobayashi T. , Nakadaira T. , Nakamura K. , Oyama Y. , Sakashita K. , Sekiguchi T. , Tsukamoto T. , Abe KE. , Hasegawa M. , Suzuki A. T. , Takeuchi Y. , Hayashino T. , Hirota S. , Jiang M. , Mori M. , Nakamura KE. , Nakaya T. , Wendell R. A. , Anthony L. H. V. , McCauley N. , Pritchard A. , Fukuda Y. , Itow Y. , Murase M. , Muto F. , Mijakowski P. , Frankiewicz K. , Jung C. K. , Li X. , Palomino J. L. , Santucci G. , Viela C. , Wilking M. J. , Yanagisawa C. , Fukuda D. , Ishino H. , Ito S. , Kibayashi A. , Koshio Y. , Nagata H. , Sakuda M. , Xu C. , Kuno Y. , Wark D. , Lodovico F. Di , Richards B. , Sedgwick S. Molina , Tacik R. , Kim S. B. , Cole A. , Thompson L. , Okazawa H. , Choi Y. , Ito K. , Nishijima K. , Koshiba M. , Suda Y. , Yokoyama M. , Calland R. G. , Hartz M. , Martens K. , Murdoch M. , Quilain B. , Simpson C. , Suzuki Y. , Vagins M. R. , Hamabe D. , Kuze M. , Okajima Y. , Yoshida T. , Ishitsuka M. , Martin J. F. , Nantais C. M. , Tanaka H. A. , Towstego T. , Konaka A. , Chen S. , Wan L. , Minamino A. ,   The Super-Kamiokande Collaboration
Published: April 2018

Abstract
We report the results of a neutrino search in Super-Kamiokande (SK) for coincident signals with the first detected gravitational wave (GW) produced by a binary neutron-star merger, GW170817, which was followed by a short gamma-ray burst, GRB170817A, and a kilonova/macronova. We searched for coincident neutrino events in the range from 3.5 MeV to ∼100 PeV, in a time window ±500 s around the gravitational wave detection time, as well as during a 14-day period after the detection. No significant neutrino signal was observed for either time window. We calculated 90% confidence level upper limits on the neutrino fluence for GW170817. From the upward-going-muon events in the energy region above 1.6 GeV, the neutrino fluence limit is

16.0

−
0.6

+
0.7

(

21.3

−
0.8

+
1.1

) cm−2 for muon neutrinos (muon antineutrinos), with an error range of ±5° around the zenith angle of NGC4993, and the energy spectrum is under the assumption of an index of −2. The fluence limit for neutrino energies less than 100 MeV, for which the emission mechanism would be different than for higher-energy neutrinos, is also calculated. It is 6.6 × 107 cm−2 for anti-electron neutrinos under the assumption of a Fermi–Dirac spectrum with average energy of 20 MeV.