Optical and X-ray early follow-up of ANTARES neutrino alerts
Creators: name: Adrian-Martinez, S.
name: Ageron, M.
name: Albert, A.
name: Samarai, I. Al
name: Andre, M.
name: Anton, G.
name: Ardid, M.
name: Aubert, J. -J.
name: Baret, B.
name: Barrios-Marti, J.
name: Basa, S.
name: Bertin, V.
name: Biagi, S.
name: Bogazzi, C.
name: Bormuth, R.
name: Bou-Cabo, M.
name: Bouwhuis, M. C.
name: Bruijn, R.
name: Brunner, J.
name: Busto, J.
name: Capone, A.
name: Caramete, L.
name: Carr, J.
name: Chiarusi, T.
name: Circella, M.
name: Coniglione, R.
name: Costantini, H.
name: Coyle, P.
name: Creusot, A.
name: Dekeyser, I.
name: Deschamps, A.
name: De Bonis, G.
name: Distefano, C.
name: Donzaud, C.
name: Dornic, D.
name: Drouhin, D.
name: Dumas, A.
name: Eberl, T.
name: Elsasser, D.
name: Enzenhofer, A.
name: Fehn, K.
name: Felis, I.
name: Fermani, P.
name: Folger, F.
name: Fusco, L. A.
name: Galata, S.
name: Gay, P.
name: Geißelsoder, S.
name: Geyer, K.
name: Giordano, V.
name: Gleixner, A.
name: Gracia-Ruiz, R.
name: Graf, K.
name: van Haren, H.
name: Heijboer, A. J.
name: Hello, Y.
name: Hernandez-Rey, J. J.
name: Herrero, A.
name: Hoßl, J.
name: Hofestadt, J.
name: Hugon, C.
name: James, C. W
name: de Jong, M.
name: Kadler, M.
name: Kalekin, O.
name: Katz, U.
name: Kießling, D.
name: Kooijman, P.
name: Kouchner, A.
name: Kreykenbohm, I.
name: Kulikovskiy, V.
name: Lahmann, R.
name: Lambard, G.
name: Lattuada, D.
name: Lefevre, D.
name: Leonora, E.
name: Loucatos, S.
name: Mangano, S.
name: Marcelin, M.
name: Margiotta, A.
name: Martinez-Mora, J. A.
name: Martini, S.
name: Mathieu, A.
name: Michael, T.
name: Migliozzi, P.
name: Moussa, A.
name: Mueller, C.
name: Neff, M.
name: Nezri, E.
name: Pavalas, G. E.
name: Pellegrino, C.
name: Perrina, C.
name: Piattelli, P.
name: Popa, V.
name: Pradier, T.
name: Racca, C.
name: Riccobene, G.
name: Richter, R.
name: Roensch, K.
name: Rostovtsev, A.
name: Saldana, M.
name: Samtleben, D. F. E.
name: Sanguineti, M.
name: Sapienza, P.
name: Schmid, J.
name: Schnabel, J.
name: Schulte, S.
name: Schüssler, F.
name: Seitz, T.
name: Sieger, C.
name: Spurio, M.
name: Steijger, J. J. M.
name: Stolarczyk, Th.
name: Sanchez-Losa, A.
name: Taiuti, M.
name: Tamburini, C.
name: Trovato, A.
name: Tselengidou, M.
name: Tonnis, C.
name: Turpin, D.
name: Vallage, B.
name: Vallee, C.
name: Van Elewyck, V.
name: Vecchi, M.
name: Visser, E.
name: Vivolo, D.
name: Wagner, S.
name: Wilms, J.
name: Zornoza, J. D.
name: Zuniga, J.
name: Klotz, A.
name: Boer, M.
name: Van Suu, A. Le
name: Akerlof, C.
name: Zheng, W.
name: Evans, P.
name: Gehrels, N.
name: Kennea, J.
name: Osborne, J. P.
name: Coward, D. M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: High-energy neutrinos could be produced in the interaction of charged cosmic rays with matter or radiation surrounding astrophysical sources. Even with the recent detection of extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos by the IceCube experiment, no astrophysical neutrino source has yet been discovered. Transient sources, such as gamma-ray bursts, core-collapse supernovae, or active galactic nuclei are promising candidates. Multi-messenger programs offer a unique opportunity to detect these transient sources. By combining the information provided by the ANTARES neutrino telescope with information coming from other observatories, the probability of detecting a source is enhanced, allowing the possibility of identifying a neutrino progenitor from a single detected event. A method based on optical and X-ray follow-ups of high-energy neutrino alerts has been developed within the ANTARES collaboration. This program, denoted as TAToO, triggers a network of robotic optical telescopes (TAROT and ROTSE) and the Swift-XRT with a delay of only a few seconds after a neutrino detection, and is therefore well-suited to search for fast transient sources. To identify an optical or X-ray counterpart to a neutrino signal, the images provided by the follow-up observations are analysed with dedicated pipelines. A total of 42 alerts with optical and 7 alerts with X-ray images taken with a maximum delay of 24 hours after the neutrino trigger have been analysed. No optical or X-ray counterparts associated to the neutrino triggers have been found, and upper limits on transient source magnitudes have been derived. The probability to reject the gamma-ray burst origin hypothesis has been computed for each alert.