Search

Astrophysical neutrinos are excellent probes of astroparticle physics and high-energy physics. With energies far beyond solar, supernovae, atmospheric, and accelerator neutrinos, high-energy and ultra-high-energy neutrinos probe fundamental physics from the TeV scale to the EeV scale and beyond. They are sensitive to physics both within and beyond the Standard Model through their production mechanisms and in their propagation over cosmological distances. They carry unique information about their extreme non-thermal sources by giving insight into regions that are opaque to electromagnetic radiation. This white paper describes the opportunities astrophysical neutrino observations offer for astrophysics and high-energy physics, today and in coming years. Astrophysical neutrinos are excellent probes of astroparticle physics and high-energy physics. With energies far beyond solar, supernovae, atmospheric, and accelerator neutrinos, high-energy and ultra-high-energy neutrinos probe fundamental physics from the TeV scale to the EeV scale and beyond. They are sensitive to physics both within and beyond the Standard Model through their production mechanisms and in their propagation over cosmological distances. They carry unique information about their extreme non-thermal sources by giving insight into regions that are opaque to electromagnetic radiation. This white paper describes the opportunities astrophysical neutrino observations offer for astrophysics and high-energy physics, today and in coming years.

For more than a decade, searches for common sources of gravitational-waves (GWs) and astrophysical neutrinos have returned null results. With the open public alerts of LIGO-Virgo during their third observing run O3 in 2019-2020, search for high energy neutrinos continued in realtime with IceCube. Here, we describe our analysis with Low-Latency Algorithm for Multi-messenger Astrophysics (LLAMA) which incorporates a Bayesian formalism with astrophysical priors to use the distance information from the 3D localization of GW detections for higher statistical power. Finally, we summarize our results during O3.

(The attached PDF contains select pictures from the Amaldi8 Conference) At Amaldi7 in Sydney in 2007 the Gravitational Wave International Committee (GWIC), which oversees the Amaldi meetings, decided to hold the 8th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves at Columbia University in the City of New York. With this decision, Amaldi returned to North America after a decade. The previous two years have seen many advances in the field of gravitational wave detection. By the summer of 2009 the km-scale ground based interferometric detectors in the US and Europe were preparing for a second long-term scientific run as a worldwide detector network. The advanced or second generation detectors had well-developed plans and were ready for the production phase or started construction. The European-American space mission, LISA Pathfinder, was progressing towards deployment in the foreseeable future and it is expected to pave the ground towards gravitational wave detection in the milliHertz regime with LISA. Plans were developed for an additional gravitational wave detector in Australia and in Japan (in this case underground) to extend the worldwide network of detectors for the advanced detector era. Japanese colleagues also presented plans for a space mission, DECIGO, that would bridge the gap between the LISA and ground-based interferometer frequency range. Compared to previous Amaldi meetings, Amaldi8 had new elements representing emerging trends in the field. For example, with the inclusion of pulsar timing collaborations to the GWIC, gravitational wave detection using pulsar timing arrays was recognized as one of the prominent directions in the field and was represented at Amaldi8 as a separate session. By 2009, searches for gravitational waves based on external triggers received from electromagnetic observations were already producing significant scientific results and plans existed for pointing telescopes by utilizing gravitational wave trigger events. Such multimessenger approaches to gravitational wave detection also received special attention at the meeting. For the first time in the history of Amaldi conferences, plenary and contributed sessions were held to transfer ideas and experience gained with gravitational wave science inspired education and outreach projects. Additionally, Columbia University faculties working in frontier fields, which currently may not have direct connection to the field of gravitational wave science, gave enthralling presentations in the form of a 'wake-up' lecture series. The meeting also facilitated the exchange of scientific results and new ideas among all members of gravitational wave experiment collaborations and the gravitational wave theory community. Additionally, future directions in gravitational wave detection were discussed in a special session dedicated to the Gravitational Wave International Committee Roadmap. A highly entertaining and inspiring public talk titled Songs from Space: Black Holes and the Big Bang in Audio was given by Janna Levin and it attracted over 300 young and old science enthusiasts from and around New York City. This special issue of Classical and Quantum Gravity (Volume 27, Number 8, 2010) is published as the proceedings of Amaldi8. It contains the overview articles by invited plenary speakers, and some of the highlights of the meeting as selected by session chairs and organizers. Other Amaldi8 talks and posters appear in the refereed issue of the electronic Journal of Physics: Conference Series. This issue of CQG and the JPCS issue are electronically linked. The conference organizers gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Columbia University in the City of New York, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the United States National Science Foundation. We would like to thank the Gravitational Wave International Committee for the scientific oversight, the Local Organizing Committee for the program selection, and the session chairs for the thoughtful delivery of conference goals and enabling many lively discussions that are much needed for the development of our frontier field. We would also like to thank the hard work of Columbia University Physics Department administrators for handling some of the practical aspects of the organization. Finally, a team of students (Jonathan Berliner, Rutu Das, David Fierroz, Alyssa Miller, David Murphy and Keith Redwine) provided assistance behind the scene. Their hard work, practical ideas, and dedication are greatly appreciated. We are also grateful for Keith Redwine for his help in organizing the JPCS proceedings articles. Finally, we would like to thank the over 310 participants for their interesting and lively contributions that ultimately made the conference a success. Zsuzsa Marka Local Organizing Committee Szabolcs Marka Chair, Local Organizing Committee Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory and Physics Department, Columbia University Guest Editors