Search for spatial coincidence between IceCube neutrinos and radio pulsars

TL;DR

This study investigates whether radio pulsars are sources of ultra-high energy neutrinos by analyzing IceCube data, finding no significant association and suggesting pulsars do not contribute to the observed neutrino flux.

Contribution

First comprehensive search for spatial correlation between radio pulsars and IceCube neutrinos using unbinned likelihood analysis.

Findings

No pulsars show significant neutrino excess

Pulsars are unlikely to be major sources of IceCube neutrinos

Results constrain models linking pulsars to high-energy neutrino production

Abstract

We search for a spatial association between radio pulsars and ultra-high energy neutrinos using the publicly available IceCube point source neutrino events catalog. For this purpose we use the unbinned maximum likelihood method to search for a statistically significant excess from each of the pulsars in the ATNF catalog. We do not find any pulsars with detection significance much higher than that expected from a Gaussian distribution, Therefore, we conclude that none of the currently known pulsars contribute to the diffuse neutrino flux detected by IceCube.