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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 66: Neutrino astronomy 3
T 66.6: Talk
Wednesday, March 6, 2024, 17:15–17:30, Geb. 30.23: 6/1
Investigating the contribution of Seyfert galaxies to astrophysical neutrino observations using source population simulations — •Lena Saurenhaus1, Francesca Capel1, and Foteini Oikonomou2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Boltzmannstr. 8, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany — 2Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Institutt for fysikk, Høgskoleringen 5, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are among the most powerful objects in the Universe and are suspected to be sources of astrophysical neutrinos. Recently, the IceCube Collaboration reported an excess of neutrino events with energies between 1.5 and 15 TeV associated with NGC 1068, a nearby Seyfert galaxy with an extraordinarily high intrinsic X-ray flux. The lack of observable gamma rays in this energy range indicates that these neutrinos are likely to be produced in the AGN corona, which is opaque to high-energy gamma rays. Motivated by these findings, we explore the prospects of observing other hidden neutrino sources with similar neutrino production mechanisms. Assuming a correlation between the intrinsic X-ray luminosity and the neutrino luminosity of a source, we build a simple neutrino emission model that accounts for both photohadronic and hadronuclear interactions. Using this model in combination with publicly available detector information, we then make predictions about the detectability of the neutrino emission from a selection of other nearby Seyfert galaxies with IceCube and its planned extension IceCube-Gen2. In addition, we simulate an entire population of Seyfert galaxies and estimate the resulting diffuse neutrino emission to draw a coherent picture of the contribution of these sources to astrophysical neutrino observations.
Keywords: astrophysical neutrinos; active galactic nuclei (AGN); Seyfert galaxies; NGC 1068; IceCube