Assessing coincident neutrino detections using population models
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Capel, F
Burgess, JM
Mortlock, DJ
Padovani, P
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Several tentative associations between high-energy neutrinos and astrophysical sources have been recently reported, but a conclusive identification of these potential neutrino emitters remains challenging. We explore the use of Monte Carlo simulations of source populations to gain deeper insight into the physical implications of proposed individual source–neutrino associations. In particular, we focus on the IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 observation. Assuming a null model, we find a 7.6% chance of mistakenly identifying coincidences between γ-ray flares from blazars and neutrino alerts in 10-year surveys. We confirm that a blazar–neutrino connection based on the γ-ray flux is required to find a low chance coincidence probability and, therefore, a significant IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 association. We then assume this blazar–neutrino connection for the whole population and find that the ratio of neutrino to γ-ray fluxes must be ≲10−2 in order not to overproduce the total number of neutrino alerts seen by IceCube. For the IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 association to make sense, we must either accept this low flux ratio or suppose that only some rare sub-population of blazars is capable of high-energy neutrino production. For example, if we consider neutrino production only in blazar flares, we expect the flux ratio of between 10−3 and 10−1 to be consistent with a single coincident observation of a neutrino alert and flaring γ-ray blazar. These constraints should be interpreted in the context of the likelihood models used to find the IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 association, which assumes a fixed power-law neutrino spectrum of E−2.13 for all blazars.
Date Issued
2022-12-20
Date Acceptance
2022-10-08
Citation
Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2022, 668
ISSN
0004-6361
Publisher
EDP Sciences
Journal / Book Title
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Volume
668
Issue
358
Copyright Statement
© The Authors 2022 Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article is published in open access under the Subscribe-to-Open model. Open access funding provided by Max Planck Society.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000937951600008&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=a2bf6146997ec60c407a63945d4e92bb
Subjects
Astronomy & Astrophysics
astroparticle physics
ASTROPY
BLAZARS
CATALOG
CONSTRAINTS
data analysis
EMISSION
FERMI
FLUX
HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINO
methods
MULTIWAVELENGTH
neutrinos
Physical Sciences
Science & Technology
TXS 0506+056
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
A190
Date Publish Online
2022-12-20