First Search for High-Energy Neutrino Emission from Galaxy Mergers

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Bouri, Subhadip, Parashari, Priyank, Das, Mousumi, Laha, Ranjan
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Bouri, Subhadip
Parashari, Priyank
Das, Mousumi
Laha, Ranjan
author_facet Bouri, Subhadip
Parashari, Priyank
Das, Mousumi
Laha, Ranjan
contents The exact sources of high-energy neutrinos detected by the IceCube neutrino observatory still remain a mystery. For the first time, this work explores the hypothesis that galaxy mergers may serve as sources for these high-energy neutrinos. Galaxy mergers can host very high-energy hadronic and photohadronic processes, which may produce very high-energy neutrinos. We perform an unbinned maximum-likelihood-ratio analysis utilizing the galaxy merger data from six catalogs and 10 years of public IceCube muon-track data to quantify any correlation between these mergers and neutrino events. First, we perform the single source search analysis, which reveals that none of the considered galaxy mergers exhibit a statistically significant correlation with high-energy neutrino events detected by IceCube. Furthermore, we conduct a stacking analysis with three different weighting schemes to understand if these galaxy mergers can contribute significantly to the diffuse flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos detected by IceCube. We find that upper limits (at $95\%$ CL) of the all flavor high-energy neutrino flux, associated with galaxy mergers considered in this study, at $100$ TeV with spectral index $Γ=-2$ are $1.11\times 10^{-18}$, $3.69 \times 10^{-19}$ and $1.02 \times 10^{-18}$ $\rm GeV^{-1}\,cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}\,sr^{-1}$ for the three weighting schemes. This work shows that these selected galaxy mergers do not contribute significantly to the IceCube detected high energy neutrino flux. We hope that in the near future with more data, the search for neutrinos from galaxy mergers can either discover their neutrino production or impose more stringent constraints on the production mechanism of high-energy neutrinos within galaxy mergers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_06539
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle First Search for High-Energy Neutrino Emission from Galaxy Mergers
Bouri, Subhadip
Parashari, Priyank
Das, Mousumi
Laha, Ranjan
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Physics - Experiment
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
The exact sources of high-energy neutrinos detected by the IceCube neutrino observatory still remain a mystery. For the first time, this work explores the hypothesis that galaxy mergers may serve as sources for these high-energy neutrinos. Galaxy mergers can host very high-energy hadronic and photohadronic processes, which may produce very high-energy neutrinos. We perform an unbinned maximum-likelihood-ratio analysis utilizing the galaxy merger data from six catalogs and 10 years of public IceCube muon-track data to quantify any correlation between these mergers and neutrino events. First, we perform the single source search analysis, which reveals that none of the considered galaxy mergers exhibit a statistically significant correlation with high-energy neutrino events detected by IceCube. Furthermore, we conduct a stacking analysis with three different weighting schemes to understand if these galaxy mergers can contribute significantly to the diffuse flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos detected by IceCube. We find that upper limits (at $95\%$ CL) of the all flavor high-energy neutrino flux, associated with galaxy mergers considered in this study, at $100$ TeV with spectral index $Γ=-2$ are $1.11\times 10^{-18}$, $3.69 \times 10^{-19}$ and $1.02 \times 10^{-18}$ $\rm GeV^{-1}\,cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}\,sr^{-1}$ for the three weighting schemes. This work shows that these selected galaxy mergers do not contribute significantly to the IceCube detected high energy neutrino flux. We hope that in the near future with more data, the search for neutrinos from galaxy mergers can either discover their neutrino production or impose more stringent constraints on the production mechanism of high-energy neutrinos within galaxy mergers.
title First Search for High-Energy Neutrino Emission from Galaxy Mergers
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Physics - Experiment
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.06539