Limit on high energy neutrino emission from Abell 119 using IceCube 10-year muon track data

TL;DR

This study used 10 years of IceCube muon track data to search for high energy neutrinos from Abell 119, setting upper limits that challenge the hadronic origin hypothesis of its gamma-ray emission.

Contribution

First to set neutrino flux upper limits on Abell 119 using a decade of IceCube data, constraining hadronic models of gamma-ray emission.

Findings

No significant neutrino excess detected from Abell 119.

Upper limits on neutrino flux are close to theoretical predictions for hadronic origin.

Results marginally exclude the hadronic model for gamma-ray emission in this cluster.

Abstract

We carry out a search for high energy muon neutrino emission from the galaxy cluster Abell 119, motivated by a recent detection of GeV gamma rays from this cluster using the Fermi-LAT telescope, which hinted at a hadronic origin. For this purpose, we used the 10-year muon track data from 2008-2018, provided by the IceCube Collaboration and implement the unbinned maximum likelihood emission. We do not find any statistically significant excess and the test statistics is consistent with a null result. We then obtain upper limits (at 95\% confidence level) on the differential muon neutrino energy flux from this cluster, whose value is equal to $2.42 \times 10^{-10}~\mathrm{GeV}~\mathrm{cm}^{-2}~\mathrm{s}^{-1}~\mathrm{sr}^{-1}$ at 100 TeV. This limit is about 1.2 times lower than the predicted neutrino flux required to explain the hadronic origin of the galaxy cluster emission, thus marginally ruling it out. Therefore, additional data from future neutrino detectors should be able to definitively rule out a hadronic origin for the observed gamma-ray emission in Abell 119.