Status of neutrino astronomy

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current status of neutrino astronomy, focusing on astrophysical neutrino sources, detection efforts, and recent modeling developments for extragalactic sources like gamma-ray bursts and active galactic nuclei.

Contribution

It provides an overview of recent advancements in neutrino flux modeling for key extragalactic sources and discusses the challenges in identifying high-energy neutrino emitters.

Findings

Only two confirmed astrophysical neutrino sources: the sun and SuperNova 1987A.

Detection efforts by IceCube and KM3NeT target neutrinos above 100 GeV.

Recent models focus on gamma-ray bursts and active galactic nuclei as promising sources.

Abstract

Astrophysical neutrinos can be produced in proton interactions of charged cosmic rays with ambient photon or baryonic fields. Cosmic rays are observed in balloon, satellite and air shower experiments every day, from below 1e9 eV up to macroscopic energies of 1e21 eV. The observation of different photon fields has been done ever since, today with detections ranging from radio wavelengths up to very high-energy photons in the TeV range. The leading question for neutrino astronomers is now which sources provide a combination of efficient proton acceleration with sufficiently high photon fields or baryonic targets at the same time in order to produce a neutrino flux that is high enough to exceed the background of atmospheric neutrinos. There are only two confirmed astrophysical neutrino sources up to today: the sun and SuperNova 1987A emit and emitted neutrinos at MeV energies. The aim of large underground Cherenkov telescopes like IceCube and KM3NeT is the detection of neutrinos at energies above 100 GeV. In this paper, recent developments of neutrino flux modeling for the most promising extragalactic sources, gamma ray bursts and active galactic nuclei, are presented.