Neutrino Observations of LHAASO Sources: Present Constraints and Future Prospects

TL;DR

This paper analyzes ten years of IceCube neutrino data to constrain the hadronic gamma-ray emission from LHAASO sources, finding limited current constraints but promising future detection prospects if gamma-rays are hadronic in origin.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian analysis of long-term neutrino data to constrain hadronic gamma-ray emission from LHAASO sources and assesses future detection prospects with larger neutrino telescopes.

Findings

Neutrino flux from Crab Nebula is below 90% C.L. of gamma-ray flux.

Current data cannot strongly constrain hadronic processes in most sources.

Future detectors could detect hadronic gamma-rays from Crab Nebula within 20 years.

Abstract

The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) observed a dozen of gamma-ray sources with significant emission above 100 TeV, which may be strong candidates of PeVatrons. Neutrino observations are crucial to diagnose whether the gamma-ray radiative process is hadronic or leptonic. We use the Bayesian method to analyze the ten-year (2008-2018) IceCube data, and hence constrain the hadronic gamma-ray emission in the LHAASO sources. The present neutrino data show that the hadronic gamma-ray flux from Crab Nebula is lower than the observed gamma-ray flux at the 90% C.L. and contributes less than 86%, which disfavors the hadronic origin of the gamma-rays below tens of TeV. For the other LHAASO sources, the present neutrino observations cannot put useful constraints on the gamma-ray radiative process. We consider the uncertainty of the source extension: the upper limits on hadronic gamma-ray flux tend to increase with the extension; and some sources, i.e., LHAASO J2032+4102, LHAASO J1929+1745, and LHAASO J1908+0621, show relatively high statistical significance of neutrino signals if the extension is <0.6 deg. We finally estimate the future observational results of LHAASO sources by the proposed neutrino telescopes. If the LHAASO-observed PeV gamma-rays are of hadronic origin, Crab Nebula may be detected at >100 TeV at 3-sigma C.L. within 20 years by a neutrino detector with the effective area 30 times that of IceCube.