Speaker
Description
Solar flare neutrinos from the decay of mesons produced in collisions of accelerated ions from the solar atmosphere are expected with energies of O(MeV-Gev). The study of such neutrinos, combined with existing gamma-ray observations by Fermi-LAT, would provide a novel window to the underlying physics of the acceleration process. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory may be sensitive to solar flare neutrinos and therefore provides a possibility to measure the signal or establish more stringent upper limits on the solar flare neutrino flux. Results from a new approach to search dedicated to low energy neutrinos coming from transient events will be presented. It combines a time profile analysis and an optimized selection of solar flare events based on Fermi-LAT observations, significantly lowering the energy threshold of IceCube, which was initially designed to detect neutrinos with energies above O(100 GeV) and above.
