Francis Halzen

Prof. Dr. Francis Halzen


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

35Years (1992-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

View All Publications
1 March 2022 in The Astrophysical Journal
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
RAR. Abbasi
R. Abbasi
MAM. Ackermann
M. Ackermann
JAJ. Adams
J. Adams
JAJ. A. Aguilar
J. A. Aguilar
MAM. Ahlers
M. Ahlers
ICIceCube Collaboration
IceCube Collaboration
We present a measurement of the high-energy astrophysical muon–neutrino flux with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The measurement uses a high-purity selection of 650k neutrino-induced muon tracks from the northern celestial hemisphere, corresponding to 9.5 yr of experimental data. With respect to previous publications, the measurement is improved by the increased size of the event sample and the extended model testing beyond simple power-law hypotheses. An updated treatment of systematic uncertainties and atmospheric background fluxes has been implemented based on recent models. The best-fit single power-law parameterization for the astrophysical energy spectrum results in a normalization of ϕ @ 100 TeV ν μ + ν ¯ μ = 1.44 − 0.26 + 0.25 × 10 − 18 GeV − 1 cm − 2 s − 1 sr − 1 and a spectral index γ SPL = 2.37 − 0.09 + 0.09 , constrained in the energy range from 15 TeV to 5 PeV. The model tests include a single power law with a spectral cutoff at high energies, a log-parabola model, several source-class-specific flux predictions from the literature, and a model-independent spectral unfolding. The data are consistent with a single power-law hypothesis, however, spectra with softening above one PeV are statistically more favorable at a two-sigma level.

1 November 2023 in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
RAR. Abbasi
R. Abbasi
MAM. Ackermann
M. Ackermann
JAJ. Adams
J. Adams
SASanjib Kumar Agarwalla
Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla
JAJ. A. Aguilar
J. A. Aguilar
PZP. Zhelnin
P. Zhelnin
We present a catalog of likely astrophysical neutrino track-like events from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. IceCube began reporting likely astrophysical neutrinos in 2016, and this system was updated in 2019. The catalog presented here includes events that were reported in real time since 2019, as well as events identified in archival data samples starting from 2011. We report 275 neutrino events from two selection channels as the first entries in the catalog, the IceCube Event Catalog of Alert Tracks, which will see ongoing extensions with additional alerts. The Gold and Bronze alert channels respectively provide neutrino candidates with a 50% and 30% probability of being astrophysical, on average assuming an astrophysical neutrino power-law energy spectral index of 2.19. For each neutrino alert, we provide the reconstructed energy, direction, false-alarm rate, probability of being astrophysical in origin, and likelihood contours describing the spatial uncertainty in the alert's reconstructed location. We also investigate a directional correlation of these neutrino events with gamma-ray and X-ray catalogs, including 4FGL, 3HWC, TeVCat, and Swift-BAT.

1 November 2022 in The Astrophysical Journal
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
RAR. Abbasi
R. Abbasi
MAM. Ackermann
M. Ackermann
JAJ. Adams
J. Adams
JAJ. A. Aguilar
J. A. Aguilar
MAM. Ahlers
M. Ahlers
FMFor The Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor
For The Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are considered as promising sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) due to their large power output. Observing a neutrino flux from GRBs would offer evidence that GRBs are hadronic accelerators of UHECRs. Previous IceCube analyses, which primarily focused on neutrinos arriving in temporal coincidence with the prompt gamma-rays, found no significant neutrino excess. The four analyses presented in this paper extend the region of interest to 14 days before and after the prompt phase, including generic extended time windows and targeted precursor searches. GRBs were selected between 2011 May and 2018 October to align with the data set of candidate muon-neutrino events observed by IceCube. No evidence of correlation between neutrino events and GRBs was found in these analyses. Limits are set to constrain the contribution of the cosmic GRB population to the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux observed by IceCube. Prompt neutrino emission from GRBs is limited to ≲1% of the observed diffuse neutrino flux, and emission on timescales up to 104 s is constrained to 24% of the total diffuse flux.

26 October 2015 in Physical Review D
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
CACarlos Argüelles-Delgado
Carlos Argüelles-Delgado
FHFrancis Halzen
Francis Halzen
LWLogan Wille
Logan Wille
MKMike Kroll
Mike Kroll
MRMary Hall Reno
Mary Hall Reno
By combining the color dipole model of the nucleon with the assumption that cross sections behave asymptotically as ln2(s), we are able to describe the data for photon, neutrino and hadron interactions with protons at all energies; s is the center-of-mass energy of the interacting particles. Specifically, we extrapolate the perturbative QCD calculations into the regime of small fractional parton momenta x using a color dipole description of the proton target that guarantees an asymptotic ln2(s) behavior of all cross sections. The ambiguity of introducing a parametrization associated with the dipole approximation is mitigated by the requirement that the saturation of the small-x structure functions produce ln2(s)-behaved asymptotic cross sections, in agreement with the data. The same formalism allows us to calculate the cross section for the hadronic pair production of charm particles. The results, in particular those for the high-energy neutrino and charm cross sections, are relevant for evaluating the sensitivity as well as the background in neutrino telescopes.

1 March 2023 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
RAR. Abbasi
R. Abbasi
MAM. Ackermann
M. Ackermann
JAJ. Adams
J. Adams
SASanjib Kumar Agarwalla
Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla
NAN. Aggarwal
N. Aggarwal
ICIceCube Collaboration
IceCube Collaboration
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have long been considered a possible source of high-energy neutrinos. While no correlations have yet been detected between high-energy neutrinos and GRBs, the recent observation of GRB 221009A—the brightest GRB observed by Fermi-GBM to date and the first one to be observed above an energy of 10 TeV—provides a unique opportunity to test for hadronic emission. In this paper, we leverage the wide energy range of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to search for neutrinos from GRB 221009A. We find no significant deviation from background expectation across event samples ranging from MeV to PeV energies, placing stringent upper limits on the neutrino emission from this source.

8 November 2023 in Physical Review D
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
PDF file
RAR. Abbasi
R. Abbasi
MAM. Ackermann
M. Ackermann
JAJ. Adams
J. Adams
SASanjib Kumar Agarwalla
Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla
JAJ. A. Aguilar
J. A. Aguilar
ICIceCube Collaboration
IceCube Collaboration
Dark matter particles in the Galactic Center and halo can annihilate or decay into a pair of neutrinos producing a monochromatic flux of neutrinos. The spectral feature of this signal is unique and it is not expected from any astrophysical production mechanism. Its observation would constitute a dark matter smoking gun signal. We performed the first dedicated search with a neutrino telescope for such signal, by looking at both the angular and energy information of the neutrino events. To this end, a total of five years of IceCube’s DeepCore data has been used to test dark matter masses ranging from 10 GeV to 40 TeV. No significant neutrino excess was found and upper limits on the annihilation cross section, as well as lower limits on the dark matter lifetime, were set. The limits reached are of the order of 10−24  cm3/s for an annihilation and up to 1027  s for decaying dark matter. Using the same data sample we also derive limits for dark matter annihilation or decay into a pair of Standard Model charged particles.