Measuring the Astrophysical Galactic Plane Neutrino Flux and Searching for Galactic PeVatrons using the IceCube Multi-Flavor Astrophysical Neutrino Sample

TL;DR

This paper analyzes 12.3 years of IceCube neutrino data to search for galactic PeVatrons and neutrino sources, aiming to identify cosmic-ray accelerators in the galactic plane through multiple analysis methods.

Contribution

It introduces the ICEMAN dataset, combining various neutrino samples, and applies two novel analysis approaches to detect galactic PeVatrons and neutrino-gamma correlations.

Findings

No significant neutrino excess detected from the galactic plane.

Constraints placed on the neutrino flux from potential galactic PeVatrons.

Enhanced understanding of the neutrino sky in the galactic region.

Abstract

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has provided new insights into the high-energy universe, in particular, unveiling neutrinos from the galactic plane. However, galactic neutrino sources are still unresolved. The recent detection of multi-PeV photons by LHAASO from the Cygnus region highlights its potential as a galactic neutrino source. Additionally, LHAASO, HAWC, and HESS have reported over forty galactic gamma-ray sources with energies above 100 TeV. Detecting neutrinos correlated with high-energy gamma-ray sources would provide compelling evidence of cosmic-ray acceleration in these galactic sources. In this work, we compile a 12.3-year, full-sky, all-flavor dataset, the IceCube Multi-Flavor Astrophysics Neutrino sample (ICEMAN). ICEMAN is the combination of three largely independent neutrino samples of different event morphologies and builds upon the previous work of the DNN-based cascade sample, Enhanced Starting Track Event Selection, and the Northern Track sample. Recent improvements in ice modeling and detector calibration are also incorporated into the cascade reconstruction. In addition to revisiting the galactic plane, we adopt two different analysis methods to search for galactic PeVatrons. First, we use a template-based approach to probe the Cygnus Cocoon region. Second, we use a point source hypothesis to find correlations between IceCube neutrinos and gamma-ray sources detected at energies greater than 100 TeV.