Jannis Necker (DESY Zeuthen): High energy neutrinos from infrared flares

Europe/Berlin
GAFO 03/252 (RUB)

GAFO 03/252

RUB

Description

The collected data of IceCube, a cubic kilometre neutrino detector array in the antarctic ice, reveal a diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos. The extragalactic sources of these neutrinos however have yet to be discovered. Recently, high-energy neutrino alerts, sent out by IceCube in real time, were observed in coincidence with two (likely) Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs), radiation outbursts from supermassive black holes that accrete at an enhanced rate. A follow-up study found a broader sample of flares due to enhanced accretion onto supermassive blackholes to be correlated at 3.7 sigma with IceCube's high-energy neutrino alerts. Because these flares happen in a dusty environment, the electromagnetic radiation from the accretion disc is absorbed by the dust and re-emitted in the mid-infrared. We conducted a stacking analysis, testing the correlation at energies from O(100) GeV to O(10) TeV but did not find any excess. To enhance sensitivity, we constructed a comprehensive catalog of around 800 infrared flares based on data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission called Flaires. The physical parameters derived from the data are consistent within the dust echo model and the estimated completeness lies between 25-50%. We will outline why this catalog is the best choice for a search for high-energy neutrino emission under the assumption that they are produced in interactions between high-energy protons and the IR photons.

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