English

Multiwavelength search for the origin of IceCube's neutrinos

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2022-09-12 v2

Abstract

The origin of astrophysical high-energy neutrinos detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory remains a mystery to be solved. In this paper we search for neutrino source candidates within the 9090% containment area of 7070 track-type neutrino events recorded by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. By employing the Fermi-LAT 4FGL-DR2, the Swift-XRT 2SXPS and the CRATES catalogs, we identify possible gamma, X-ray and flat-spectrum radio candidate sources of track-type neutrinos. We find that based on the brightness of sources and their spatial correlation with the track-type IceCube neutrinos, the constructed neutrino samples represent special populations of sources taken from the full Fermi-LAT 4FGL-DR2/Swift-XRT 2SXPS/CRATES catalogs with similar significance (2.1σ2.1\sigma, 1.2σ1.2\sigma, 2σ2\sigma at 4.8 GHz4.8~\mathrm{GHz}, 2.1σ2.1\sigma at 8.4 GHz8.4~\mathrm{GHz}, respectively, assuming 50% astrophysical signalness). After collecting redshifts and deriving sub-samples of the CRATES catalog complete in the redshift--luminosity plane, we find that the 4.8 GHz (8.48.4~GHz) sub-sample can explain between 4% and 53% (33% and 4242%) of the neutrinos (90% C.L.), when the probability to detect a neutrino is proportional to the (kk-corrected) radio flux. The overfluctuations indicate that a part of the sample is likely to contribute and that more sophisticated schemes in the source catalog selection are necessary to identify the neutrino sources at the 5σ5\sigma level. Our selection serves as a starting point to further select the correct sources.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2203.14780,
  title  = {Multiwavelength search for the origin of IceCube's neutrinos},
  author = {Emma Kun and Imre Bartos and Julia Becker Tjus and Peter L. Biermann and Anna Franckowiak and Francis Halzen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.14780},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

17 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables. Accepted to ApJ