Searching for Southern Sky Neutrino Sources with IceCube Starting Track Events

The IceCube detector is an array of photomultiplier tubes embedded deep in the South Pole ice that aims to discover the origins of astrophysical neutrinos. Due to the detector location, the southern sky astrophysical neutrino signal lies under a large background of muons generated in cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere. Therefore, IceCube's sensitivity to astrophysical neutrino sources has always been stronger in the Northern Sky where the main background is atmospheric neutrinos created by cosmic ray air showers. In this talk, we will present a selection method which looks to improve IceCube's sensitivity to southern sky sources by selecting for starting tracks created by muon neutrinos that interact inside of the IceCube detector volume. By selecting for starting tracks, we not only reduce the atmospheric muon background but also the atmospheric neutrino background, allowing for a high purity sample of astrophysical neutrinos in the southern sky. We will show our results for four types of neutrino source searches: a whole sky neutrino source search, an individual source search with locations from bright gamma ray objects, a stacked source search which looks for a signal from multiple sources of the same type, and a galactic plane template search which looks for neutrinos created in the galactic plane medium.