The origin of the high-energy flux of neutrinos detected by IceCube is still unknown. Recent works report the evidence for a possible positional correlation between the reconstructed neutrino arrival directions and the positions in the sky of low power, high-energy emitting BL Lac objects (HBL). Assuming that $γ$-ray emitting HBL form the bulk of the sources of high-energy neutrinos above 100 TeV, we intend to calculate the number of events expected to be detected for each source by IceCube and KM3NeT. Based on a simple theoretically-motivated framework inspired by the structured jet scenario for these sources, we postulate a direct proportionality between high-energy $γ$-ray and neutrino fluxes. We calculate the expected neutrino event rate for the HBL sources of the Second Fermi-LAT Catalog of High-Energy Sources (2FHL) for IceCube and the presently under construction KM3NeT using declination-dependent and exposure-weighted effective areas. We provide a list of 2FHL HBL with the calculated number of events. For IceCube, the derived count rate for several sources is relatively high, of the order of $\lesssim$1 yr$^{-1}$, consistently with the recent findings of a possible positional correlation. For KM3NeT the calculated rates are higher, with several sources with expected rate exceeding 1 yr$^{-1}$. This, coupled with the improved angular resolution, implies that the HBL origin can be effectively tested with few years of observation of KM3NeT (and IceCube Gen2, for which similar performances are foreseen) through the direct association of neutrinos and single HBL. Our results show that if -- as hinted by recent works -- HBL represent a possible population of high-energy neutrino emitters, several single sources should be identified in few years of exposure of KM3NeT, highlighting the importance of the improved angular resolution anticipated for KM3NeT and IceCube Gen2.
The recent IceCube discovery of 0.1-1 PeV neutrinos of astrophysical origin opens up a new era for high-energy astrophysics. Although there are various astrophysical candidate sources, a firm association of the detected neutrinos with one (or more) of them is still lacking. A recent analysis of plausible astrophysical counterparts within the error circles of IceCube events showed that likely counterparts for nine of the IceCube neutrinos include mostly BL Lacs, among which Mrk 421. Motivated by this result and a previous independent analysis on the neutrino emission from Mrk 421, we test the B…
The origin of the astrophysical high-energy neutrinos discovered by IceCube is currently a major mystery. The recent detection of IceCube-170922A, a $\sim$300 TeV neutrino potentially correlated with the flaring $γ$-ray source TXS 0506+056, directs attention toward BL Lac objects (BL Lacs), the subclass of blazars with weak emission lines. While high-energy neutrinos can be produced via photohadronic interactions between protons accelerated in their jets and ambient low-energy photons, the density of the latter in such objects had generally been thought to be too low for efficient neutrino emi…
IceCube has recently reported the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, opening up the PeV (10^15 eV) sky. Because of their large positional uncertainties, these events have not yet been associated to any astrophysical source. We have found plausible astronomical counterparts in the GeV -- TeV bands by looking for sources in the available large area high-energy gamma-ray catalogues within the error circles of the IceCube events. We then built the spectral energy distribution of these sources and compared it with the energy and flux of the corresponding neutrino. Likely co…
Multi-messenger astronomy can help to investigate the sources of the high-energy neutrinos observed by the high-energy neutrino telescope IceCube. We consider the hypothesis that the highest energy neutrinos are produced by BL Lacs, arguing that this is not contradicted severely by any known fact. We check the BL Lac hypothesis by searching for correlations between the through-going muon events of IceCube and the BL Lacs of the second catalog of Fermi-LAT (2FHL). We expect 10.2 $\pm$ 2.4 correlated events but we find that just 1 event has a BL Lac as counterpart. We also assess the probability…
High-frequency-peaked BL Lacs (HBLs) dominate the extragalactic TeV sky, with more than 50 objects detected by the current generation of TeV observatories. Still, the properties of TeV-emitting HBLs as a population are poorly understood due to biases introduced by the observing strategies of Cherenkov Telescopes, limiting our ability to estimate the potential contribution of TeV blazars to the diffuse neutrino, gamma-ray, and cosmic-ray background as well as their role in the late-stage evolution of active galactic nuclei. The VERITAS telescope array has designed a program to quantify and mini…
Aim: We have collected the most complete multi-wavelength ($6.0 - 6.0 \times 10^{-18} cm$) dataset of very high energy (VHE) $γ$-ray emitting (TeV) BL Lacs, which are the most numerous extragalactic VHE sources. Using significant correlations between different bands, we aim to identify the best TeV BL Lac candidates that can be discovered by the current and next generation of imaging air Cherenkov telescopes. Methods: We formed five datasets from lower energy data, i.e. radio, mid-infrared, optical, X-rays, and GeV $γ$-ray, and five VHE $γ$-ray datasets to perform a correlation study between d…
The discovery of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos by IceCube kicked off a new line of research to identify the electromagnetic counterparts producing these neutrinos. Among the extragalactic sources, active galactic nuclei (AGN), and in particular Blazars, are promising candidate neutrino emitters. Their structure, with a relativistic jet pointing to the Earth, offers a natural accelerator of particles and for this reason a perfect birthplace of high energy neutrinos. A good characterisation of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of these sources can improve the understanding of the phys…
Blazars have been pointed out as promising high-energy (HE) neutrinos sources, although the mechanism is still under debate. The blazars with a hard-TeV spectrum, which leptonic models can hardly explain, can be successfully interpreted in the hadronic scenarios. Recently, Aguilar et al. proposed a lepto-hadronic two-zone model to explain the multi-wavelength observations of the six best-known extreme BL Lacs and showed that the hadronic component could mainly interpret very-high-energy (VHE) emission. In this work, we apply this hadronic model to describe the VHE gamma-ray fluxes of 14 extrem…
We investigate with relativistic MHD simulations the dissipation physics of BL Lac jets, by studying the synchrotron polarization signatures of particles accelerated by the kink instability in a magnetically-dominated plasma column. The nonlinear stage of the kink instability generates current sheets, where particles can be efficiently accelerated via magnetic reconnection. We identify current sheets as regions where s = J d/B is above some predefined threshold (where B is the field strength, J the current density and d the grid scale), and assume that the particle injection efficiency scales …
We recently proposed that structured (spine-sheath) jets associated to BL Lac objects offer a suitable environment for the production of the extragalactic high-energy ($E>100$ TeV) neutrino recently revealed by IceCube. Our previous analysis was limited to low-power BL Lac objects. We extend our preliminary study to the entire BL Lac population. We assume that the power of cosmic rays as well as the radiative luminosity of the sheath depend linearly on the the jet power. In turn, we assume that the latter is well traced by the $γ$-ray luminosity. We exploit the BL Lac $γ$-ray luminosity functi…
We present results of an archival coincidence analysis between Fermi LAT gamma-ray data and public neutrino data from the IceCube neutrino observatory's 40-string (IC40) and 59-string (IC59) observing runs. Our analysis has the potential to detect either a statistical excess of neutrino + gamma-ray ($ν$+$γ$) emitting transients or, alternatively, individual high gamma-multiplicity events, as might be produced by a neutrino observed by IceCube coinciding with a LAT-detected gamma-ray burst. Dividing the neutrino data into three datasets by hemisphere (IC40, IC59-North, and IC59-South), we const…
Hunting for extreme high-energy-peaked BL Lacs: Rare to find and difficult to classify
INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio（国家天体物理研究所空间科学与天体物理观测台）；Instituto de Astrofisica, Universidad Andres Bello（安第斯贝尔托大学 Astrophysics 研究所）
High-Synchrotron-Peaked BL Lacs as Multi-Messenger Sources: Connecting Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays and Neutrinos
Unidade Acadêmica de Física, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UAF-UFCG)（坎皮纳格兰德联邦大学物理学术单位）；Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo (IFUSP)（圣保罗大学物理研究所）；Departamento de Engenharias e Exatas, Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR)（巴拉那联邦大学工程与理学院）；Programa de Pós-Graduação em Física, Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Londrina (UEL)（隆德里纳州立大学物理系物理学研究生项目）；Programa de Pós-Graduação em Física e Astronomia, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR)（巴拉那联邦技术大学物理与天文学研究生项目）；Programa de Pós-Graduação em Física Aplicada, Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana（拉丁美洲一体化联邦大学应用物理学研究生项目）；Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Núcleo de Astrofísica e Cosmologia (Cosmo-Ufes)（圣埃斯皮里图联邦大学物理系天体物理与宇宙学中心）
Most of the extragalactic sources detected at TeV energies are BL Lac objects. They belong to the subclass of "high frequency peaked BL Lacs" (HBLs) exhibiting spectral energy distributions with a lower energy peak in the X-ray band; this is widely interpreted as synchrotron emission from relativistic electrons. The X-ray spectra are generally curved, and well described in terms of a log-parabolic shape. In a previous investigation of TeV HBLs (TBLs) we found two correlations between their spectral parameters. (1) The synchrotron peak luminosity L_p increases with its peak energy E_p; (2) the …
We reconsider the emission properties of the BL Lac objects emitting in the high-energy gamma-ray band exploiting the new information in the MeV-GeV band obtained by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope in its first three months of operation. To this aim we construct the spectral energy distribution of all the BL Lacs revealed by LAT and of the known TeV BL Lacs not detected by LAT, also including data from the Swift satellite, and model them with a simple one-zone leptonic model. The analysis shows that the BL Lacs detected by LAT (being or not already de…
A radio-emitting tidal disruption event (AT2019dsg) is proposed as a likely counterpart of the IceCube neutrino event IC-191001A. In this work we have revisited the {\it Fermi}-LAT data in the direction of the neutrino and confirmed no signal at the site of AT2019dsg. Instead, at the edge of the 90\% confidential level error region of this neutrino there is a $γ$-ray transient source associated with a blazar GB6 J2113+1121. In May 2019, GB6 J2113+1121 was undergoing an unprecedented $γ$-ray flare since the start of the {\it Fermi}-LAT operation, with a variability amplitude about 20-fold. Simi…
IceCube is a cubic-kilometer scale neutrino detector instrumenting a gigaton of ice at the geographic South Pole in Antarctica. On average, 8 track-like high-energy neutrino events with a high probability of being astrophysical are detected and published as alerts per year. The bright appearance of these events in the detector allow a precise pointing to their origins. This work presents a search for cosmic neutrino sources. The analysis uses high statistics archival IceCube neutrino-induced through-going muon samples to search for these sources in the vicinity of the incoming directions of th…
Blazars have been suggested as possible neutrino sources long before the recent IceCube discovery of high-energy neutrinos. We re-examine this possibility within a new framework built upon the blazar simplified view and a self-consistent modelling of neutrino emission from individual sources. The former is a recently proposed paradigm that explains the diverse statistical properties of blazars adopting minimal assumptions on blazars' physical and geometrical properties. This view, tested through detailed Monte Carlo simulations, reproduces the main features of radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray blaza…
We present the results obtained from our campaign to characterize the intra-night-optical variability properties of blazars detected by the {\it Fermi} Large Area Telescope. This involves R-band monitoring observations of a sample of 18 blazars, that includes five flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and thirteen BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) covering the redshift range z = 0.085$-$1.184. Our observations, carried out using the 1.3 m J.C. Bhattacharya Telescope cover a total of 40 nights ($\sim$200 hrs) between the period 2016 December and 2020 March. We characterized variability using the power enh…
Since 2010 IceCube observed around 50 high-energy neutrino events of cosmic origin above 60 TeV, but the astrophysical sources of these events are still unknown. We recently proposed high-energy emitting BL Lac (HBL) objects as candidate emitters of high-energy neutrinos. Assuming a direct proportionality between high-energy gamma-ray and very-high energy neutrino fluxes, we calculated the expected neutrino event number in a year for IceCube and the presently under construction Km3NeT. To give a value of the significance of a detection we considered also the background for the single sources. …
A new look at the extragalactic Very High Energy sky: searching for TeV-emitting candidates among the X-ray bright, non-Fermi detected blazar population
Among the ~2157 unassociated sources in the third data release (DR3) of the fourth Fermi catalog, ~1200 were observed with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory pointed instruments. These observations yielded 238 high S/N X-ray sources within the 95% Fermi uncertainty regions. Recently, Kerby et al. employed neural networks to find blazar candidates among these 238 X-ray counterparts to the 4FGL unassociated sources and found 112 likely blazar counterpart sources. A complete sample of blazars, along with their sub-classification, is a necessary step to help understand the puzzle of the blazar seq…
The origin of the high-energy neutrinos (0.1$-$1 PeV range) detected by IceCube remains a mystery. In this work we explore the possibility that efficient neutrino production can occur in structured jets of BL Lac objects, characterized by a fast inner spine surrounded by a slower layer. This scenario has been widely discussed in the framework of the high-energy emission models for BL Lacs and radiogalaxies. One of the relevant consequences of a velocity structure is the enhancement of the inverse Compton emission caused by the radiative coupling of the two zones. We show that a similar boostin…
The synchrotron-self Compton (SSC) radiation process is widely held to provide a close representation of the double peaked spectral energy distributions from BL Lac Objects (BL Lacs), which are marked by non-thermal beamed radiations, highly variable on timescales of days or less. Their outbursts in the gamma ray relative to the optical/X rays might be surmised to be enhanced in BL Lacs as these photons are upscattered via the inverse Compton (IC) process. From the observed correlations among the spectral parameters during optical/X-ray variations we aim at predicting corresponding correlation…
We present two ways of modeling the spectral energy distribution of blazars in the hadronic context and discuss the predictions of each "hadronic variant" on the spectral shape, the multi-wavelength variability, the cosmic-ray flux, and the high-energy neutrino emission. Focusing on the latter, we then present an application of the hadronic model to individual BL Lacs that were recently suggested to be the counterparts of some of the IceCube neutrinos, and conclude by discussing the contribution of the whole BL Lac class to the observed neutrino background.
We report on the radio brightening of the blazar TXS 0506+056 (at $z=0.3365$), supporting its identification as source of the high-energy (HE) neutrino IC-170922A by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. MOJAVE/VLBA data indicate its radio brightness abruptly increasing since January 2016. When decomposing the total radio flux density curve (January 2008 - July 2018) provided by the Owens Valley Radio Observatory into eight Gaussian flares, the peak time of the largest flare overlaps with the HE neutrino detection, while the total flux density exhibits a threefold increase since January 2016. We r…
We investigate the IceCube detection potential of very high energy neutrinos from blazars, for different classes of "hadronic" models, taking into account the limits imposed on the neutrino flux by the recent Fermi telescope observations. Assuming the observed gamma-ray emission is produced by the decay of neutral pions from proton-proton interactions, the measurement of the time-averaged spectral characteristics of blazars in the GeV energy band imposes upper limits on the time-averaged neutrino flux. Comparing these upper limits to the 5 sigma discovery threshold of IceCube for different neu…
While blazars have long been one of the candidates in the search for the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and astrophysical neutrinos, the BL Lac object TXS 0506+056 is the first extragalactic source that is correlated with some confidence with a high-energy neutrino event recorded with IceCube. At the time of the IceCube event, the source was found in a high state in gamma-rays with Fermi-LAT and MAGIC. We have explored in detail the parameter space of a lepto-hadronic radiative model, assuming a single emitting region inside the relativistic jet. We present the complete range of possi…
Recently, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has detected the neutrino event IceCube-170922A from the radio-emitting tidal disruption event (TDE) named AT2019dsg, indicating to be one of the most likely sources of high-energy cosmic rays. So far, the photo-hadronic interaction is considered in the literature to interpret neutrino emission from AT2019dsg. Here, we examine whether the IceCube-170922A along with the broadband electromagnetic emission from the source can also be described by a pure hadronic emission employing the proton blazar inspired (PBI) model, which takes into account the non-r…
We discuss the production of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) nuclei and neutrinos from blazars. We compute the nuclear cascade in the jet for both BL Lac objects and flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), and in the ambient radiation zones for FSRQs as well. By modeling representative spectral energy distributions along the blazar sequence, two distinct regimes are identified, which we call "nuclear survival" -- typically found in low-luminosity BL Lacs, and "nuclear cascade" -- typically found in high-luminosity FSRQs. We quantify how the neutrino and cosmic-ray (CR) emission efficiencies …
The recent spatial and temporal coincidence of the blazar TXS 0506+056 with the IceCube detected neutrino event IC-170922A has opened up a realm of multi-messenger astronomy with blazar jets as a plausible site of cosmic-ray acceleration. After TXS 0506+056, a second blazar, BZB J0955+3551, has recently been found to be spatially coincident with the IceCube detected neutrino event IC-200107A and undergoing its brightest X-ray flare measured so far. Here, we present the results of our multi-frequency campaign to study this peculiar event that includes observations with the NuSTAR, Swift, NICER,…
We present the results of archival coincidence analyses using public neutrino data from the 40-string configuration of IceCube (IC40) and contemporaneous public gamma-ray data from Fermi LAT. Our analyses have the potential to discover statistically significant coincidences between high-energy neutrino and gamma-ray signals, and hence, possible jointly-emitting neutrino/gamma-ray transients. This work is an example of more general multimessenger studies that the Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON) aims to perform. AMON is currently under development and will link multiple r…
Astrophysical neutrino events have been measured in the last couple of years, which show an isotropic distribution, and the current discussion is their astrophysical origin. We use both isotropic and anisotropic components of the diffuse neutrino data to constrain the contribution of a broad number of extra-galactic source populations to the observed neutrino sky. We simulate up-going muon neutrino events by applying statistical distributions for the flux of extragalactic sources, and by Monte Carlo method we exploit the simulation for current and future IceCube, IceCube-Gen2 and KM3NeT exposu…
The spectral energy distribution of blazars around the synchrotron peak can be well described by the log-parabolic model that has three parameters: peak energy ($E_\textrm{p}$), peak luminosity ($L_\textrm{p}$) and the curvature parameter ($b$). It has been suggested that $E_\textrm{p}$ shows relations with $L_\textrm{p}$ and $b$ in several sources, which can be used to constrain the physical properties of the emitting region and/or acceleration processes of the emitting particles. We systematically study the $E_\textrm{p}$-$L_\textrm{p}$ and $E_\textrm{p}$-(1$/b$) relations for 14 BL Lac obje…
An updated analysis of a targeted search for high-energy neutrinos from Markarian 421 and Markarian 501 is reported. They are two of the closest and brightest extragalactic sources in the TeV band. In contrast to other types of active galactic nuclei, BL Lacs are characterized by rapid and large-amplitude flux variability. Such radio-loud active galactic nuclei are candidate sources of the observed high-energy cosmic rays. Because their jet is collimated to our line of sight, the hadronic interactions with the surrounding medium can produce an accompanying neutrino and gamma-ray flux. The rece…
Eight years after the first detection of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos by IceCube we are still almost clueless as regards to their origin, although the case for blazars being neutrino sources is getting stronger. After the first significant association at the $3 - 3.5\,σ$ level in time and space with IceCube neutrinos, i.e. the blazar TXS 0506+056 at $z=0.3365$, some of us have in fact selected a unique sample of 47 blazars, out of which $\sim 16$ could be associated with individual neutrino track events detected by IceCube. Building upon our recent spectroscopy work on these objects, he…
The sources of IceCube neutrinos are as yet unknown. The multi-messenger observation of their emission in $γ$-rays can be a guide to their identification, as exemplified by the case of TXS 0506+056. We suggest a new method of searching for $γ$-rays with Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes from sources in coincidence with possible astrophysical neutrinos. We propose that searches of $γ$-rays are extended, from the current practice of only a few days, to up to one month from a neutrino alert. We test this strategy on simulated sources modeled after the blazar \emph{TXS 0506+056-like}, emitting neut…
Individual astrophysical sources previously detected in neutrinos are limited to the Sun and the supernova 1987A, whereas the origins of the diffuse flux of high-energy cosmic neutrinos remain unidentified. On 22 September 2017 we detected a high-energy neutrino, IceCube-170922A, with an energy of approximately 290 TeV. Its arrival direction was consistent with the location of a known gamma-ray blazar TXS 0506+056, observed to be in a flaring state. An extensive multi-wavelength campaign followed, ranging from radio frequencies to gamma-rays. These observations characterize the variability and…
The detection of a bright radio burst (hereafter FRB 200428) in association with a hard X-ray burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154 suggests that magnetars can make FRBs. We study possible neutrino emission from FRB-emitting magnetars by developing a general theoretical framework. We consider three different sites for proton acceleration and neutrino emission, i.e. within the magnetosphere, in the current sheet region beyond the light cylinder, and in relativistic shocks far away from the magnetosphere. Different cooling processes for protons and pions are considered to calculate the …
We demonstrate that a population of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) can describe the observed spectrum of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) at and above the ankle, and that the dominant contribution comes from low-luminosity BL Lacs. An additional, subdominant contribution from high-luminosity AGN is needed to improve the description of the composition observables, leading to a substantial neutrino flux that peaks at EeV energies. We also find that different properties for the low- and high-luminosity AGN populations are required; a possibly similar baryonic loading can already be excluded f…
The BL Lac object 4FGLJ0955.1+3551 has been suggested as a possible source of ultra energetic neutrinos detected by the Icecube observatory. The target was observed in January 2020 at the Large Binocular Telescope. Our spectroscopy (4100-8500 Ang) yields a firm redshift z = 0.557 as deduced by the absorption lines of the host galaxy. The upper limit of the minimum equivalent width on emission lines is 0.3 Ang. From the source image we are able to resolve the host galaxy for which we measure an absolute magnitude M(R) = -22.9 and Re = 8 kpc, that is values which are typical of the host galaxies…
We explore the correlation of $γ$-ray emitting blazars with IceCube neutrinos by using three very recently completed, and independently built, catalogues and the latest neutrino lists. We introduce a new observable, namely the number of neutrino events with at least one $γ$-ray counterpart, $N_ν$. In all three catalogues we consistently observe a positive fluctuation of $N_ν$ with respect to the mean random expectation at a significance level of $0.4 - 1.3$ per cent. This applies only to extreme blazars, namely strong, very high energy $γ$-ray sources of the high energy peaked type, and implie…
Context. Many questions on the nature of astrophysical counterparts of high-energy neutrinos remain unanswered. There is increasing evidence of a connection between blazar jets and neutrino events, with the flare of the gamma-ray blazar TXS0506+056 in spatial and temporal proximity of IC170922A representing one of the most outstanding associations of high-energy neutrinos with astrophysical sources reported so far. Aims. With the purpose of characterising potential blazar counterparts to high-energy neutrinos, we analysed the parsec-scale regions of gamma-ray blazars in spatial coincidence wit…
The enigmatic class of Fanaroff-Riley type 0 (FR0) radio galaxies is emerging as the missing link between the faint yet numerous population of compact radio sources in nearby galaxies and the canonical Fanaroff-Riley classification scheme. This letter reports the first gamma-ray identification of three FR0 galaxies above 1 GeV using more than a decade of the Fermi Large Area Telescope observations. A cumulative gamma-ray emission at >5 sigma significance was also detected from the gamma-ray unresolved FR0 sources using the stacking technique, suggesting the FR0 population to be a gamma-ray emi…
We present a procedure to generally constrain the environments of neutrino-producing sites in photomeson production models of jetted Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) where any origin of the dominant target photon field can be accommodated. For this purpose we reconstruct the minimum target photon spectrum required to produce the (observed) neutrino spectrum, and derive the distributions of all corresponding secondary particles. These initiate electromagnetic cascades with an efficiency that is linked to the neutrino production rate. The derived photon spectra represent the minimum radiation emergi…
