Blazar origin of some IceCube events

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether flaring blazars are sources of IceCube neutrino events by analyzing positional correlations, finding no statistically significant association despite some objects being within error circles.

Contribution

It applies a photohadronic model to analyze potential blazar origins of IceCube neutrinos using ANTARES flaring blazar data.

Findings

Some blazars are within IceCube event error circles.

Statistical analysis shows no significant correlation.

Supports the need for further investigation into neutrino origins.

Abstract

Recently ANTARES collaboration presented a time dependent analysis to a selected number of flaring blazars to look for upward going muon events produced from the charge current interaction of the muon neutrinos. We use the same list of flaring blazars to look for possible positional correlation with the IceCube neutrino events. In the context of photohadronic model we propose that the neutrinos are produced within the nuclear region of the blazar where Fermi accelerated high energy protons interact with the background synchrotron/SSC photons. Although we found that some objects from the ANTARES list are within the error circles of few IceCube events, the statistical analysis shows that none of these sources have a significant correlation.