Search for extragalactic astrophysical counterparts of IceCube neutrino events

TL;DR

This study investigates potential extragalactic sources of IceCube neutrinos by cross-correlating neutrino events with X-ray and gamma-ray source catalogs, aiming to identify astrophysical origins despite large directional uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive cross-correlation analysis using multiple source catalogs and statistical methods to assess associations between neutrinos and extragalactic sources.

Findings

No definitive correlation found between neutrino events and sources.

Methodology establishes a framework for future multi-messenger source identification.

Statistical significance of observed correlations remains inconclusive.

Abstract

Detection of 54 very high-energy (VHE) neutrinos by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has opened a new chapter in multi-messenger astronomy. However due to large errors in measuring the directions of the neutrino shower-type events, which dominate the current event list, it is difficult to identify their astrophysical sources. We perform cross-correlation study of IceCube neutrino events with extragalactic candidate sources using X-ray and gamma-ray selected source catalogues such as Swift-BAT, 3LAC and TeV-Cat. We apply different cuts on the X-ray and gamma-ray fluxes of the sources in these catalogs, and use different source classes in order to study correlation. We use invariant statistic and Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate statistical significance of any correlation.