Correlation of highly variable blazars with TeV IceCube track events

TL;DR

This study investigates the correlation between flaring blazars and IceCube neutrino events, identifying one potential source and modeling its jet to understand neutrino production mechanisms.

Contribution

It presents a time-dependent lepto-hadronic model of a blazar correlated with a neutrino event, exploring its potential as a cosmic ray accelerator.

Findings

Only one of eight blazars was flaring during neutrino detection.

The modeled jet luminosity during neutrino emission is approximately 3.6 x 10^{47} erg/sec.

The study supports the possibility of blazars being sources of high-energy neutrinos.

Abstract

The first ever identification of a cosmic ray accelerator as the consequence of spacial and temporal correlation of IceCube event 170922A with flaring of a blazar TXS 0506+056 motivated us to look for other flaring blazars in Fermi-LAT 3FGL catalog, which could be correlated with IceCube high energy track events. We have studied the Fermi-LAT light curves of blazars correlated with neutrino track events. Among the eight sources identified within 2$\sigma$ angular uncertainty of the IceCube track events selected in our study, we find only one source 3FGL J2255+2409 was in flaring state during the neutrino detection. We have carried out a time dependent modelling of the multi-wavelength data from this blazar, and the neutrino event including leptonic energy losses and proton-proton interactions in its jet to determine whether it could be the origin of the neutrino event. Our lepto-hadronic model estimates a jet luminosity of $L_j = 3.6 \times10^{47}$ erg/sec during the neutrino phase of 3FGL/4FGL J2255+2409.