  Solar flares convert magnetic energy into thermal and non-thermal plasma
energy, the latter implying particle acceleration of charged particles such as
protons. Protons are injected out of the coronal acceleration region and can
interact with dense plasma in the lower solar atmosphere, producing mesons that
subsequently decay into gamma rays and neutrinos at O(MeV-GeV) energies. We
present the results of the first search for GeV neutrinos emitted during solar
flares carried out with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. While the experiment
was originally designed to detect neutrinos with energies between 10 GeV and a
few PeV, a new approach allowing for a O(GeV) energy threshold will be
presented. The resulting limits allow us to constrain some of the theoretical
estimates of the expected neutrino flux.
