TANAMI Blazars in the IceCube PeV Neutrino Fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates six bright blazars coincident with IceCube's PeV neutrino events, analyzing their multiwavelength data to assess their potential as sources of extraterrestrial neutrinos.

Contribution

It presents a multiwavelength analysis of specific blazars and models their neutrino emission, linking them to IceCube's PeV neutrino detections.

Findings

The six blazars' neutrino luminosity could explain the observed PeV events.

Multiwavelength data supports the photoproduction of pions as a neutrino source.

Blazars are plausible sources of high-energy extraterrestrial neutrinos.

Abstract

The IceCube Collaboration has announced the discovery of a neutrino flux in excess of the atmospheric background. Due to the steeply falling atmospheric background spectrum, events at PeV energies are most likely of extraterrestrial origin. We present the multiwavelength properties of the six radio brightest blazars positionally coincident with these events using contemporaneous data of the TANAMI blazar sample, including high-resolution images and spectral energy distributions. Assuming the X-ray to {\gamma}-ray emission originates in the photoproduction of pions by accelerated protons, the integrated predicted neutrino luminosity of these sources is large enough to explain the two detected PeV events.