Eur. Phys. J. C (2023) 83: 538
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11688-4

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Borexino’s search for low-energy neutrinos associated with gravitational wave events from GWTC-3 database

Borexino Collaboration

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi e INFN, 20133, Milan, Italy
² Chemical Engineering Department, Princeton University, 08544, Princeton, NJ, USA
³ INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, 67010, Assergi (AQ), Italy
⁴ Physics Department, Princeton University, 08544, Princeton, NJ, USA
⁵ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi e INFN, 16146, Genoa, Italy
⁶ Lomonosov Moscow State University Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, 119234, Moscow, Russia
⁷ St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute NRC Kurchatov Institute, 188350, Gatchina, Russia
⁸ National Research Centre Kurchatov Institute, 123182, Moscow, Russia
⁹ APC, Université de Paris, CNRS, Astroparticule et Cosmologie, 75013, Paris, France
¹⁰ Gran Sasso Science Institute, 67100, L’Aquila, Italy
¹¹ Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980, Dubna, Russia
¹² Institute of Physics and Excellence Cluster PRISMA+, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099, Mainz, Germany
¹³ M. Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, 30348, Kraków, Poland
¹⁴ Institute for Nuclear Research of NAS Ukraine, 03028, Kyiv, Ukraine
¹⁵ Department of Physics, Royal Holloway, University of London, TW20 OEX, Egham, Surrey, UK
¹⁶ Institute of Nuclear Research (Atomki), Debrecen, Hungary
¹⁷ Institut für Kernphysik, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany
¹⁸ RWTH Aachen University, 52062, Aachen, Germany
¹⁹ National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), 115409, Moscow, Russia
²⁰ Physik-Department, Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
²¹ Dipartimento di Chimica, Biologia e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi e INFN, 06123, Perugia, Italy
²² Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions and Physics Department, UMass, 01003, Amherst, MA, USA
²³ Physics Department, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA
²⁴ Department of Physics, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062, Dresden, Germany
²⁵ Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, 69117, Heidelberg, Germany
²⁶ IHEP Institute of High Energy Physics, 100049, Beijing, China
²⁷ INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, 67010, Assergi (AQ), Italy
²⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita degli Studi e INFN Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy
²⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
³⁰ GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, 64291, Darmstadt, Germany
³¹ Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, 00144, Rome, Italy

^k derbin_av@pnpi.nrcki.ru
^bg spokesperson-borex@lngs.infn.it

Received: 23 March 2023
Accepted: 5 June 2023
Published online: 26 June 2023

Abstract

The search for neutrino events in correlation with gravitational wave (GW) events for three observing runs (O1, O2 and O3) from 09/2015 to 03/2020 has been performed using the Borexino data-set of the same period. We have searched for signals of neutrino-electron scattering and inverse beta-decay (IBD) within a time window of $\pm 1000$ s centered at the detection moment of a particular GW event. The search was done with three visible energy thresholds of 0.25, 0.8 and 3.0 MeV. Two types of incoming neutrino spectra were considered: the mono-energetic line and the supernova-like spectrum. GW candidates originated by merging binaries of black holes (BHBH), neutron stars (NSNS) and neutron star and black hole (NSBH) were analyzed separately. Additionally, the subset of most intensive BHBH mergers at closer distances and with larger radiative mass than the rest was considered. In total, follow-ups of 74 out of 93 gravitational waves reported in the GWTC-3 catalog were analyzed and no statistically significant excess over the background was observed. As a result, the strongest upper limits on GW-associated neutrino and antineutrino fluences for all flavors (${\nu }_e,{\nu }_{\mu },{\nu }_{\tau }$) at the level ${10}^9-{10}^{15}{\text{cm}}^{-2}{\text{GW}}^{-1}$ have been obtained in the 0.5–5 MeV neutrino energy range.