Search for high-energy neutrinos from binary neutron star mergers

Abstract: To search for transient astrophysical neutrino sources, IceCube's optical and X-ray follow-up program is triggered by two or more neutrino candidates arriving from a similar direction within 100s. However, the rate of such neutrino multiplets was found to be consistent with the expected background of chance coincidences, such that the data does not provide indications for the existence of short-lived transient neutrino sources. Upper limits on the neutrino flux of transient source populations are presented in Aartsen et al. (2019) and we show here how these limits apply to the predicted neutrino emission from binary neutron star mergers.