In ten years of observations, the IceCube neutrino observatory has revealed a neutrino sky in tension with previous expectations for neutrino point source emissions. Astrophysical objects associated with hadronic processes might act as production sites for neutrinos, observed as point sources at Earth. Instead, a nearly isotropic flux of astrophysical neutrinos is observed up to PeV energies, prompting a reassessment of the assumed transport and production physics. This work applies a new physical explanation for neutrino production from populations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and starburst galaxies to three years of public IceCube point source data. Specifically, cosmic rays (CRs) produced at such sources might interact with extragalactic background light and gas along the line of sight, generating a secondary neutrino flux. This model is tested alongside a number of typical flux weighting schemes, in all cases the all-sky flux contribution being constrained to percent levels of the reported IceCube diffuse astrophysical flux.
IceCube has measured a diffuse astrophysical flux of TeV-PeV neutrinos. The most plausible sources are unique high energy cosmic ray accelerators like hypernova remnants (HNRs) and remnants from gamma ray bursts in star-burst galaxies, which can produce primary cosmic rays with the required energies and abundance. In this case, however, ordinary supernova remnants (SNRs), which are far more abundant than HNRs, produce a comparable or larger neutrino flux in the ranges up to 100-150 TeV energies, implying a spectral break in the IceCube signal around these energies. The SNRs contribution in the…
IceCube has detected many TeV--PeV neutrinos, but their astrophysical origins remain largely unknown. Motivated by the observed late-time X-ray/optical bumps in some gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), we examine the correlation between IceCube neutrinos and GRBs allowing delayed neutrinos $\sim$days after the prompt gamma rays. Although we have not found any definitive correlation, up to $\sim$10\% of the events observed so far at IceCube may have been neutrinos produced by the late-time GRB activities at $\sim$1 day. Assuming a connection between some IceCube events and the late GRB bumps, we show in a…
Cosmic ray accelerators like supernova and hypernova remnants in star forming galaxies are one of the most plausible sources of the IceCube observed diffuse astrophysical neutrinos. The neutrino producing hadronic processes will also produce a diffuse gamma ray flux, constrained by the Fermi-LAT bounds. The fact that point sources like blazars also contribute to the diffuse gamma ray flux implies large gamma opacity of the neutrino sources. Indeed, for these high redshift star forming galaxies the gamma absorption during the intergalactic propagation can be significant. In addition, large gamm…
IceCube measures the diffuse neutrino flux across several neutrino flavors and energy ranges. ESTES focuses on the measurement of the diffuse neutrino flux using high purity astrophysical muon neutrinos with energies above 1 TeV. We use the Enhanced Starting Track Event Selection dataset which selects for tracks starting within the IceCube fiducial volume. We employ a machine learning algorithm to help differentiate between tracks from atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos. This produces a high purity diffuse neutrino sample that can provide valuable insight into the properties of the atmosp…
The origin of the astrophysical neutrino flux reported by the IceCube Collaboration remains an open question. In this study, we use three years of publicly available IceCube data to search for evidence of neutrino emission from the blazars and non-blazar Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) contained the Fermi 4LAC catalog. We find no evidence that these sources produce high-energy neutrinos, and conclude that blazars can produce no more than 15% of IceCube's observed flux. The constraint we derive on the contribution from non-blazar AGN, which are less luminous and more numerous than blazars, is sign…
Late time decay of very heavy dark matter is considered as one of the possible explanations for diffuse PeV neutrinos observed in IceCube. We consider implications of multimessenger constraints, and show that proposed models are marginally consistent with the diffuse gamma-ray background data. Critical tests are possible by a detailed analysis and identification of the sub-TeV isotropic diffuse gamma-ray data observed by Fermi and future observations of sub-PeV gamma rays by observatories like HAWC or Tibet AS+MD. In addition, with several-year observations by next-generation telescopes such a…
Despite the spectacular discovery of an astrophysical neutrino flux by IceCube in 2013, its origin remains a mystery. Whatever its sources, we expect the neutrino flux to be accompanied by a comparable gamma-ray flux. These photons should be degraded in energy by electromagnetic cascades and contribute to the diffuse GeV-TeV flux precisely measured by the Fermi-LAT. Population studies have also permitted to identify the main classes of contributors to this flux, which at the same time have not been associated with major neutrino sources in cross-correlation studies. These considerations allow …
IceCube has reported the detection of a diffuse TeV-PeV neutrino emission, for which the flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) have been proposed to be the candidate sources. Here we assume that the neutrino flux from FSRQs is proportional to their gamma-ray ones, and obtain the gamma-ray/neutrino flux ratio by the diffuse gamma-ray flux from Fermi-LAT measurement of FSRQs and the diffuse neutrino flux detected by IceCube. We apply this ratio to individual FSRQs and hence predict their neutrino flux. We find that a large fraction of candidate FSRQs from the northern sky in the IceCube point sour…
All sky neutrino searches: Atmospheric neutrinos; Astrophysical neutrinos; Cosmegenic neutrinos; Submitted papers to the 32nd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Beijing 2011.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory first observed a diffuse flux of high energy astrophysical neutrinos in 2013. Since then, this observation has been confirmed in multiple detection channels such as high energy starting events, cascades, and through-going muon tracks. Combining these event selections into a high statistics global fit of 10 years of IceCube's neutrino data could strongly improve the understanding of the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux: challenging or confirming the simple unbroken power-law flux model as well as the astrophysical neutrino flux composition. One key component …
A signal of high-energy extraterrestrial neutrinos from unknown source(s) was recently discovered by the IceCube experiment. Neutrinos are always produced together with gamma-rays, but the gamma-ray flux from extragalactic sources is suppressed due to attenuation in the intergalactic medium. We report the discovery of a gamma-ray excess at high Galactic latitudes starting at energies 300 GeV in the data of the Fermi telescope. We show that the multi-TeV gamma-ray diffuse emission has spectral characteristics at both low and high Galactic latitudes compatible with those of the IceCube high neut…
The excess of neutrino candidate events detected by IceCube from the direction of TXS 0506+056 has generated a great deal of interest in blazars as sources of high-energy neutrinos. In this study, we analyze the publicly available portion of the IceCube dataset, performing searches for neutrino point sources in spatial coincidence with the blazars and other active galactic nuclei contained in the Fermi 3LAC and the Roma BZCAT catalogs, as well as in spatial and temporal coincidence with flaring sources identified in the Fermi Collaboration's All-Sky Variability Analysis (FAVA). We find no evid…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a 1 $km^{3}$ detector currently under construction at the South Pole. Searching for high energy neutrinos from unresolved astrophysical sources is one of the main analysis strategies used in the search for astrophysical neutrinos with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. A hard energy spectrum of neutrinos from isotropically distributed astrophysical sources could contribute to form a detectable signal above the atmospheric neutrino background. A reliable method of estimating the energy of the neutrino-induced lepton is crucial for identifying astrophysical neu…
The nearly isotropic distribution of the TeV-PeV neutrinos recently detected by IceCube suggests that they come from sources at distance beyond our Galaxy, but how far they are is largely unknown due to lack of any associations with known sources. In this paper, we propose that the cumulative TeV gamma-ray emission accompanying the production of neutrinos can be used to constrain the distance of these neutrino sources, since the opacity of TeV gamma rays due to absorption by the extragalactic background light (EBL) depends on the distance that these TeV gamma rays have travelled. As the diffus…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory measured a flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos in several detection channels. The energy spectrum is fitted as unbroken power-law, but different best-fit parameters were obtained in the various analyses covering different energy ranges between few TeV to 10 PeV. Here, we present an update to the analysis of through-going muon-neutrinos from the Northern Hemisphere. It was extended to almost ten years of data and an improved treatment of systematic uncertainties on the atmospheric fluxes was implemented. The updated best-fit parameters for the astrophysi…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been suggested as possible sources of the high-energy neutrino flux recently detected by the IceCube telescope. We revisit the fireball emission model and elaborate an analytical prescription to estimate the high-energy neutrino prompt emission from pion and kaon decays, assuming that the leading mechanism for the neutrino production is lepto-hadronic. To this purpose, we include hadronic, radiative and adiabatic cooling effects and discuss their relevance for long- (including high- and low-luminosity) and short-duration GRBs. The expected diffuse neutrino backgrou…
We compute the gamma-ray and neutrino diffuse emission of the Galaxy on the basis of a recently proposed phenomenological model characterized by radially dependent cosmic-ray (CR) transport properties. We show how this model, designed to reproduce both Fermi-LAT gamma-ray data and local CR observables, naturally reproduces the anomalous TeV diffuse emission observed by Milagro in the inner Galactic plane. Above 100 TeV our picture predicts a neutrino flux that is about five (two) times larger than the neutrino flux computed with conventional models in the Galactic Center region (full-sky). Exp…
We consider implications of the IceCube excess for hadronuclear (pp) scenarios of neutrino sources such as galaxy clusters/groups and star-forming galaxies. Since the observed neutrino flux is comparable to the diffuse gamma-ray background flux obtained by Fermi, we place new, strong upper limits on the source spectral index, Γ<2.1-2.2. In addition, the new IceCube data imply that these sources contribute at least 30%-40% of the diffuse gamma-ray background in the 100 GeV range and even ~100% for softer spectra. Our results, which are insensitive to details of the pp source models, are one of …
The recent study on the the 6-year up-going muon neutrinos by the IceCube Collaboration and the multi-messenger analyses support the hypothesis of a two-component scenario explaining the diffuse TeV-PeV neutrino flux. Depending on the steepness of the astrophysical power-law, an excess in the IceCube data is shown in the energy range 10-100 TeV (low-energy excess) or at PeV (high-energy excess). In both cases, we characterize a two-component neutrino flux where decaying Dark Matter particles provide a contribution to the IceCube observations.
The recent study on the the 6-year up-going muon neutrinos by the IceCube Collaboration support the hypothesis of a two-component scenario explaining the diffuse TeV-PeV neutrino flux. Once a hard astrophysical power-law is considered, an excess in the IceCube data is shown in the energy range 10-100 TeV (low-energy excess}). By means of a statistical analysis on the neutrino energy spectrum and on the angular distribution of neutrino arrival directions, we characterize a two-component neutrino flux where decaying/annihilating Dark Matter particles provide a contribution to the IceCube observa…
Gamma ray burst (GRB) fireballs provide one of very few astrophysical environments where one can contemplate the acceleration of cosmic rays to energies that exceed 10^20 eV. The assumption that GRBs are the sources of the observed cosmic rays generates a calculable flux of neutrinos produced when the protons interact with fireball photons. With data taken during construction IceCube has already reached a sensitivity to observe neutrinos produced in temporal coincidence with individual GRBs provided that they are the sources of the observed extragalactic cosmic rays. We here point out that the…
The interaction of cosmic rays with the gas contained in our Galaxy is a guaranteed source of diffuse high energy neutrinos. We provide expectations for this component by considering different assumptions for the cosmic ray distribution in the Galaxy which are intended to cover the large uncertainty in cosmic ray propagation models. We calculate the angular dependence of the diffuse galactic neutrino flux and the corresponding rate of High Energy Starting Events in IceCube by including the effect of detector angular resolution. Moreover we discuss the possibility to discriminate the galactic c…
The recent discovery of a diffuse neutrino flux up to PeV energies raises the question of which populations of astrophysical sources contribute to this diffuse signal. One extragalactic candidate source population to produce high-energy neutrinos are Blazars. We present results from a likelihood analysis searching for cumulative neutrino emission from Blazar populations selected with the 2nd Fermi-LAT AGN catalog (2LAC) using an IceCube data set that has been optimized for the detection of individual sources. In contrast to previous searches with IceCube, the investigated populations contain u…
Motivated by recent IceCube observations we re-examine the idea that microquasars are high energy neutrino emitters. By stretching to the maximum the parameters of the Fermi engine we show that the nearby high-mass X-ray binary LS 5039 could accelerate protons up to above about 20 PeV. These highly relativistic protons could subsequently interact with the plasma producing neutrinos up to the maximum observed energies. After that we adopt the spatial density distribution of high-mass X-ray binaries obtained from the deep INTEGRAL Galactic plane survey and we assume LS 5039 typifies the microqua…
We study the contribution of Galactic sources to the flux of astrophysical neutrinos recently observed by the IceCube Collaboration. We show that in the simplest model of homogeneous and isotropic cosmic ray diffusion in the Milky Way the Galactic diffuse neutrino emission consistent with $γ$-ray (Fermi-LAT) and cosmic ray data (KASCADE, KASCADE-Grande and CREAM) is expected to account for only $4\%-8\%$ of the IceCube flux above 60 TeV. Direct neutrino emission from cosmic ray-gas ($pp$) interactions in the sources would require an unusually large average opacity above 0.01. On the other hand…
IceCube has recently observed 37 events of TeV-PeV energies. The angular distribution, with a strong preference for downgoing directions, the spectrum, and the small muon to shower ratio in the data can not be accommodated assuming standard interactions of atmospheric neutrinos. We obtain an excellent fit, however, if a diffuse flux of ultrahigh energy (cosmogenic) neutrinos experiences collisions where only a small fraction of the energy is transferred to the target nucleon. We show that consistent models of TeV gravity or other non-Wilsonian completions of the standard model provide cross se…
The IceCube neutrino observatory has established the existence of an astrophysical diffuse neutrino component above $100$ TeV. This discovery was made using the high-energy starting event sample, which uses the outer layer of instrumented volume as a veto to significantly reduce atmospheric background. We present the latest astrophysical neutrino flux measurement using high-energy starting events. This latest iteration of the analysis extends the sample by $1.5$ years for a total of $7.5$ years, updates the event properties with newer models of light transport in the glacial ice, and has an im…
Deciphering the IceCube Diffuse Neutrino Observations via AGN Variability
School of Physics and Astronomy, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学物理与天文学院）；State Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Ocean University of China（中国海洋大学物理海洋学国家重点实验室）；Joint Laboratory for Frontier Interdisciplinary Research in Ocean Science, Mathematics and Physics, Ocean University of China（中国海洋大学海洋科学、数学和物理前沿交叉研究联合实验室）；Department of Physics, University of Johannesburg（约翰内斯堡大学物理系）
IceCube is a cubic kilometer neutrino detector array in the Antarctic ice that was designed to search for astrophysical, high-energy neutrinos. It has detected a diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos that appears to be of extragalactic origin. A possible contribution to this diffuse flux could stem from core-collapse supernovae. The high-energy neutrinos could either come from the interaction of the ejecta with a dense circumstellar medium or a jet, emanating from the star's core, that stalls in the star's envelope. Here, we will present results of a stacking analysis to search for this high…
In 2013, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory located at the geographic South Pole detected evidence for a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux above ~60 TeV. To this day, IceCube has operated with full detector configuration for more than 6 years. The observed astrophysical neutrino flux has been confirmed with > 6$σ$ significance with both events starting within the detector (all flavor) and events traversing through the Earth ($ν_μ$ charged-current). Somewhat equal flavor ratio of astrophysical neutrinos is expected at Earth assuming standard thorough oscillation. A search for tau neutrinos has …
Motivated by the indications of a possible deficit of muon tracks in the first three-year equivalent dataset of IceCube we investigate the possibility that the astrophysical (anti)neutrino flux (in the PeV energy range) could originate from β-decay of relativistic neutrons. We show that to accommodate IceCube observations it is necessary that only about 1% to 10% of the emitted cosmic rays in the energy decade 10^{8.5} \alt E_{CR}/GeV \alt 10^{9.5}$, yielding antineutrinos on Earth (10^{5.5} \alt E_{\bar ν}/GeV \alt 10^{6.5}), are observed. Such a strong suppression can be explained assuming m…
The IceCube neutrino telescope has observed for the first time a diffuse flux of high energy neutrinos, with a possible astrophysical origin. Up to now there are no evidence of sources and many hypothesis are still plausible in order to explain the measured flux. In this proceeding we analyze an alternative way to interpret the IceCube neutrinos, in terms of sum of contributions from different sources.
The IceCube Collaboration has recently reported evidence for a high-energy extraterrestrial neutrino flux. During two years of operation 28 events with energies between 30 TeV and 1.2 PeV were observed while only 10.6 events were expected from conventional atmospheric backgrounds. The hadronic interactions responsible for this IceCube excess will also produce a flux of high-energy gamma-rays that can serve as a probe of source direction and distance. We show that existing TeV to PeV diffuse gamma-ray limits support the interpretation that the IceCube excess is mostly of extragalactic origin. H…
Star-forming galaxies have been predicted to contribute considerably to the diffuse gamma-ray background as they are guaranteed reservoirs of cosmic rays. Assuming that the hadronic interactions responsible for high-energy gamma rays also produce high-energy neutrinos and that O(100) PeV cosmic rays can be produced and confined in starburst galaxies, we here discuss the possibility that star-forming galaxies are also the main sources of the high-energy neutrinos observed by the IceCube experiment. First, we compute the diffuse gamma-ray background from star-forming galaxies, adopting the lates…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has discovered a diffuse all-flavor flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. However, the corresponding astrophysical sources have not yet been identified. Neither significant point sources nor significant angular correlations of event directions have been observed by IceCube or other instruments to date. We present a new method to interpret the non-observation of angular correlations in terms of exclusions on the strength and number of point-like sources in generic astrophysical scenarios. Additionally, we constrain the presence of these sources taking int…
At the beginning of 2016, LIGO reported the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves. The measured signal was compatible with the merger of two black holes of about 30 solar masses, releasing about 3 solar masses of energy in gravitational waves. We consider the possible neutrino emission from a binary black hole merger relative to the energy released in gravitational waves and investigate the constraints coming from the non-detection of counterpart neutrinos, focusing on IceCube and its energy range. The information from searches for counterpart neutrinos is combined with the diffus…
We revisit the signatures of the Glashow resonance process $\barν_e e \to W$ in the high-energy astrophysical neutrino observatory IceCube. We note that in addition to the standard hadronic and electromagnetic showers produced by an incoming neutrino at the resonance energy of $E_ν\approx 6.3$ PeV, there are two clear signals of the process: the "pure muon" from $\barν_e e \to \barν_μμ$ and the "contained lollipop" from $\barν_e e \to \barν_ττ$. The event rate and the signal-to-background ratio (the ratio of the resonant to concurrent non-resonant processes) are calculated for each type of int…
