High Energy Neutrinos from Recent Blazar Flares

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential link between recent blazar flares and high-energy neutrinos detected by IceCube, suggesting that coincident observations could confirm blazars as sources of cosmic neutrinos.

Contribution

It demonstrates the likelihood of detecting neutrinos from blazar flares with IceCube and discusses past and future coincident observation opportunities.

Findings

IceCube may observe neutrinos from blazar flares if hadronic processes are involved.

Fermi observed a significant flare from blazar 3C 279 in June 2015.

Previous flare from 1ES 1959+650 showed intriguing neutrino coincidence.

Abstract

The energy density of cosmic neutrinos measured by IceCube matches the one observed by Fermi in extragalactic photons that predominantly originate in blazars. This has inspired attempts to match Fermi sources with IceCube neutrinos. A spatial association combined with a coincidence in time with a flaring source may represent a smoking gun for the origin of the IceCube flux. In June 2015, the Fermi Large Area Telescope observed an intense flare from blazar 3C 279 that exceeded the steady flux of the source by a factor of forty for the duration of a day. We show that IceCube is likely to observe neutrinos, if indeed hadronic in origin, in data that are still blinded at this time. We also discuss other opportunities for coincident observations that include a recent flare from blazar 1ES 1959+650 that previously produced an intriguing coincidence with AMANDA observations.