Speaker
Description
Although the characterisation of the cosmic-ray flux has significantly improved over the last decades, reaching the EeV energy scale, many fundamental questions remain open. Among these, a complete model accounting for the acceleration of charged particles to extreme energies is still lacking. To this end, the KM3NeT observatory, deployed at two abyssal sites in the Mediterranean Sea, offers a unique opportunity to detect high-energy neutrinos in the GeV–PeV range and correlate their reconstructed directions with potential cosmic accelerators. Issuing alerts to the multi-messenger community upon the detection of a reliable astrophysical neutrino candidate is a task of primary relevance for enabling a prompt and coordinated follow-up across different observatories. Similarly, searching for neutrino events coincident in time and direction with signals detected by other astronomical facilities would contribute to a better understanding of the underlying astrophysical phenomena, placing constraints on hadronic-interaction scenarios.
The KM3NeT real-time analysis system, currently under commissioning, is designed to provide fast responses to incoming external alerts and to issue prompt notifications upon the detection of robust neutrino candidates. In this way, KM3NeT will become a key actor in the global multi-messenger and multi-wavelength community for astronomical transients. This contribution focuses on the real-time neutrino search, event reconstruction and quality selection, along with the dedicated outward alerting procedures.