Speaker
Description
A primary science goal of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the detection of high-energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources. One way to facilitate such discoveries is IceCube's realtime program: IceCube issues alerts in real time for specific categories of high-energy events, thus allowing rapid follow up by the multimessenger community. As an example, follow-up observations initiated by the alert IC170922A found a flaring blazar, TXS 0506+056, in the direction of the alert, ultimately leading to the first astrophysical source detected by IceCube. However, the construction of directional uncertainty contours has historically been inconsistent across individual event reconstructions, often leading to over- or under-coverage. Ultimately, accurate directional uncertainties are crucial for multimessenger follow-ups, while also affecting the interpretation of any discovered associations. In this talk, several updates to the reconstruction model are discussed, based on the tremendous progress made recently towards a refined understanding of the ice. Along with other optimizations, these lead to more consistent likelihood spaces across different events in the realtime stream.
