Search for neutrinos from transient sources with the ANTARES telescope and optical follow-up observations

Imen Al Samarai (1) , D. Dornic (1) , S. Basa (2) , A. Klotz (3, 4) , V. Bertin (1) , M. Boer (4) , J. Brunner (1) , J. Busto (1) , S. Escoffier (1) , B. Gendre (2) , A. Mazure (2) , B. Vallage (5)

1 CPPM - Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille
2 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
3 CESR - Centre d'étude spatiale des rayonnements
4 OHP - Observatoire de Haute-Provence
5 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers

The ANTARES telescope has the opportunity to detect transient neutrino sources, such as gamma-ray bursts, core-collapse supernovae, flares of active galactic nuclei... To enhance the sensitivity to these sources, we have developed a new detection method based on the optical follow-up of “golden” neutrino events such as neutrino doublets coincident in time and space or single neutrinos of very high energy. The ANTARES Collaboration has therefore developed a very fast on-line reconstruction with a good angular resolution. These characteristics allow to trigger an optical telescope network; since February 2009, ANTARES is sending alert trigger one or two times per month to the two 25 cm robotic telescope of TAROT. This optical follow-up of such special events would not only give access to the nature of the sources but also improves the sensitivity for transient neutrino sources

Domaines: Optique / photonique; Cosmologie et astrophysique extra-galactique [astro-ph.CO]; Cosmologie et astrophysique extra-galactique [astro-ph.CO]

Imen Al Samarai, D. Dornic, S. Basa, A. Klotz, V. Bertin, et al.. Search for neutrinos from transient sources with the ANTARES telescope and optical follow-up observations. Annual meeting of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics (SF2A 2009), Jun 2009, Besançon, France. ⟨in2p3-00466858⟩