Constraints on neutrino emission from nearby galaxies using the 2MASS redshift survey and IceCube

Abstract

The distribution of galaxies within the local universe is characterized by anisotropic features. Observatories searching for the production sites of astrophysical neutrinos can take advantage of these features to establish directional correlations between a neutrino dataset and overdensities in the galaxy distribution in the sky. The results of two correlation searches between a seven-year time-integrated neutrino dataset from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, and the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) catalog are presented here. The first analysis searches for neutrinos produced via interactions between diffuse intergalactic Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) and the matter contained within galaxies. The second analysis searches for low-luminosity sources within the local universe, which would produce subthreshold multiplets in the IceCube dataset that directionally correlate with galaxy distribution. No significant correlations were observed in either analyses. Constraints are presented on the flux of neutrinos originating within the local universe through diffuse intergalactic UHECR interactions, as well as on the density of standard candle sources of neutrinos at low luminosities.

Cosmographic model of the astroparticle skies

“…Nonetheless, the full-sky picture that astroparticle physicists employed for population and cross-correlation studies (e.g. [5] and [6] for neutrinos and UHECRs) mostly remained limited over the past decade to 140 Mpc ( ≈ 0.03 or ∼ 400 Myr). Such a distance limit corresponds to the volume probed by the 2MASS redshift survey (2MRS, [7]) through measurements of spectroscopic distances of galaxies and estimates of their stellar mass ( * ) at near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths.…”

Follow-up of Astrophysical Transients in Real Time with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

“…It is not until neutrino data are correlated with lists of candidate neutrino emitters from EM observations that indications of neutrino signals from observed sources begin to manifest above the background expectation (Aartsen et al 2020b). However, attempts to correlate astrophysical neutrinos with known sources thus far have fallen short of explaining diffuse flux, such as trying to correlate neutrinos with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) (Aartsen et al 2017a), gamma-ray detected blazars (Aartsen et al 2017), fast radio bursts (FRBs) (Aartsen et al 2020c(Aartsen et al , 2018c, the Galactic plane (Aartsen et al 2017b), large-scale structures (Aartsen et al 2020d;Fang et al 2020), pulsar wind nebulae (Aartsen et al 2020e), and the progenitors of gravitational waves (Albert et al 2019(Albert et al , 2017Aartsen et al 2020f;ANTARES Collaboration et al 2020;Hussain et al 2020;Keivani et al 2020). Many of these searches have set strong constraints on source classes which were once believed to be dominant sources of astrophysical neutrinos.…”

Constraints on the models of the origin of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos

“…For densities of 10 −6 /Mpc 3 these constraints require to take into account [186] the local large-scale structure of the Universe, which the distributions of all astrophysical objects follow, when analyzing neutrino arrival directions; examples of sources of this type are starburst galaxies. The analyses carried out [187,188] have not yielded strong constraints on these scenarios yet.…”