Measuring the Neutrino Flux in Segments along the Galactic Plane with IceCube

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Neste, Ludwig, Hünnefeld, Mirco, Finley, Chad
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Neste, Ludwig
Hünnefeld, Mirco
Finley, Chad
author_facet Neste, Ludwig
Hünnefeld, Mirco
Finley, Chad
contents Gamma-ray emission from the plane of the Milky Way is understood as partly originating from the interaction of cosmic rays with the interstellar medium. The same interaction is expected to produce a corresponding flux of neutrinos. In 2023, IceCube reported the first observation of this galactic neutrino flux at 4.5$σ$ confidence level. The analysis relied on neutrino flux predictions - based on gamma ray observations - to model the expected neutrino emission from the galactic plane. Three signal hypotheses describing different possible spatial and energy distributions were tested, where the single free parameter in each test was the normalization of the neutrino flux. We present first results of an analysis that can improve the characterization of Galactic neutrino emission by dividing the galactic plane into segments in galactic longitude. An unbinned maximum-likelihood analysis is used that can fit the spectral index and the flux normalization separately in each segment. While gamma ray telescopes can not differentiate between hadronic and leptonic emission, neutrino production must come from hadronic processes. Measuring a spectral index can further help to understand the contribution of unresolved neutrino sources inside the galactic plane. This work uses a full-sky cascade dataset and provides model-independent insight into the variation of the neutrino flux and energy distribution from different regions of the galactic plane.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_08097
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Measuring the Neutrino Flux in Segments along the Galactic Plane with IceCube
Neste, Ludwig
Hünnefeld, Mirco
Finley, Chad
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Experiment
Gamma-ray emission from the plane of the Milky Way is understood as partly originating from the interaction of cosmic rays with the interstellar medium. The same interaction is expected to produce a corresponding flux of neutrinos. In 2023, IceCube reported the first observation of this galactic neutrino flux at 4.5$σ$ confidence level. The analysis relied on neutrino flux predictions - based on gamma ray observations - to model the expected neutrino emission from the galactic plane. Three signal hypotheses describing different possible spatial and energy distributions were tested, where the single free parameter in each test was the normalization of the neutrino flux. We present first results of an analysis that can improve the characterization of Galactic neutrino emission by dividing the galactic plane into segments in galactic longitude. An unbinned maximum-likelihood analysis is used that can fit the spectral index and the flux normalization separately in each segment. While gamma ray telescopes can not differentiate between hadronic and leptonic emission, neutrino production must come from hadronic processes. Measuring a spectral index can further help to understand the contribution of unresolved neutrino sources inside the galactic plane. This work uses a full-sky cascade dataset and provides model-independent insight into the variation of the neutrino flux and energy distribution from different regions of the galactic plane.
title Measuring the Neutrino Flux in Segments along the Galactic Plane with IceCube
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Experiment
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08097