Detecting Neutrino Emission from Supernova Remnants: A Theoretically Motivated Target Catalog

TL;DR

This paper proposes a theoretically motivated catalog of Galactic supernova remnants to identify likely hadronic sources of neutrinos, enhancing the prospects of detecting neutrino emissions with IceCube and confirming their role in cosmic ray acceleration.

Contribution

It develops a tiered catalog of SNRs based on diffusive shock acceleration theory to prioritize sources for neutrino detection, integrating theoretical insights with observational data.

Findings

Stacking SNRs improves neutrino detection sensitivity.

The catalog can guide targeted neutrino searches with IceCube.

Potential for near-future confirmation of SNRs as cosmic ray sources.

Abstract

Galactic supernova remnants (SNRs) are thought to accelerate cosmic rays (CRs) to several PeV energies, but this has yet to be confirmed as general behavior. Although several sources show ~100 TeV gamma rays, their hadronic origin is uncertain; a matching neutrino signal would provide definitive evidence. Using insight from the theory of diffusive shock acceleration, we evaluate the spectra and environments of the sample of Galactic SNRs to identify those most likely to be hadronic, categorizing them into a tiered catalog depending on their likelihood to produce neutrinos detectable in the TeV-PeV range. We then calculate the estimated stacked sensitivity of IceCube for each tier using IceCube's ten-year public data. Our results suggest that this strategy of stacking SNRs and carefully excluding leptonic sources by using theoretical arguments may allow for a detection of this source class that would otherwise be impossible. A follow-up analysis of these catalogs using TeV-PeV sensitive neutrino data from IceCube (or similar telescopes like KM3NeT/ARCA) offers the most decisive, near-future test for the hadronic nature of these SNRs and the maximum energies of their CR spectra.