English

Correlation Between X-Ray and Cosmic Neutrino Sources: From Obscured AGN to Blazars

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2026-05-18 v1

Abstract

The origin of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos remains a key open question in multimessenger astrophysics. A correlation between unabsorbed hard X-ray emission and high-energy neutrino luminosity has been reported in a sample of six active galactic nuclei with the highest individual IceCube significances, linking neutrino production to compact, photon-rich environments near supermassive black holes. In this work we study whether the threshold-near IceCube excesses associated with seven NuSTAR-observed blazars are statistically consistent with that established relation. Calibrating the relation between the neutrino and hard X-ray luminosities as logLν=α+βlogLhX+N(0,σint2)\log L_\nu = \alpha + \beta \log L_\mathrm{hX} + \mathcal{N}(0, \sigma_{\rm int}^2) on the six published sources via a Bayesian regression with errors on both axes, the recovered slope is consistent with β=1\beta = 1, and the intrinsic scatter is 0.6\sim 0.6\,dex. All seven new blazars are posterior-predictively consistent with this calibration (χ72=1.58\chi^2_7 = 1.58, p=0.98p = 0.98) under the working hypothesis that the published IceCube best-fit neutrino numbers n^s\hat{n}_s values reflect the signal. A null-injection test confirms that, given the present calibration sample size, the consistency test does not by itself adjudicate between signal and selected-background origins. A distance-free LhX/LνL_\mathrm{hX}/L_\nu ratio diagnostic places both populations within the photohadronic prediction band, statistically indistinguishable. A flux-space permutation test on the 13-source joint sample, with construction-controlled dL2d_L^{\,2} distance bias, rejects random pairing LhXL_\mathrm{hX}--LνL_\nu with p=6.3×104p = 6.3 \times 10^{-4} (3.23σ3.23\,\sigma). We interpret these results as a conditional consistency check; a detection-level statement requires either an enlarged calibration set or an X-ray-weighted IceCube stacking likelihood with internal data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.15360,
  title  = {Correlation Between X-Ray and Cosmic Neutrino Sources: From Obscured AGN to Blazars},
  author = {Emma Kun and Imre Bartos and Claudio Ricci and Santiago del Palacio and Francis Halzen and Julia Becker Tjus and Peter L. Biermann and Anna Franckowiak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.15360},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

18 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to PASP