English

The Galactic Contribution to IceCube's Astrophysical Neutrino Flux

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2017-08-31 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

High energy neutrinos have been detected by IceCube, but their origin remains a mystery. Determining the sources of this flux is a crucial first step towards multi-messenger studies. In this work we systematically compare two classes of sources with the data: Galactic and extragalactic. We assume that the neutrino sources are distributed according to a class of Galactic models. We build a likelihood function on an event by event basis including energy, event topology, absorption, and direction information. We present the probability that each high energy event with deposited energy Edep>60E_{\rm dep}>60 TeV in the HESE sample is Galactic, extragalactic, or background. For Galactic models considered the Galactic fraction of the astrophysical flux has a best fit value of 1.3%1.3\% and is <9.5%<9.5\% at 90\% CL. A zero Galactic flux is allowed at <1σ<1\sigma.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.09721,
  title  = {The Galactic Contribution to IceCube's Astrophysical Neutrino Flux},
  author = {Peter B. Denton and Danny Marfatia and Thomas J. Weiler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.09721},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Updated with 6 year HESE data from IceCube, accepted for publication in JCAP