Searching for High-energy Neutrino Emission from Galaxy Clusters with IceCube

Abstract

Galaxy clusters have the potential to accelerate cosmic rays (CRs) to ultrahigh energies via accretion shocks or embedded CR acceleration sites. The CRs with energies below the Hillas condition will be confined within the cluster and eventually interact with the intracluster medium gas to produce secondary neutrinos and gamma rays. Using 9.5 yr of muon neutrino track events from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, we report the results of a stacking analysis of 1094 galaxy clusters with masses ≳1014 M ⊙ and redshifts between 0.01 and ∼1 detected by the Planck mission via the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect. We find no evidence for significant neutrino emission and report upper limits on the cumulative unresolved neutrino flux from massive galaxy clusters after accounting for the completeness of the catalog up to a redshift of 2, assuming three different weighting scenarios for the stacking and three different power-law spectra. Weighting the sources according to mass and distance, we set upper limits at a 90% confidence level that constrain the flux of neutrinos from massive galaxy clusters (≳1014 M ⊙) to be no more than 4.6% of the diffuse IceCube observations at 100 TeV, assuming an unbroken E −2.5 power-law spectrum.

The diffuse gamma-ray flux from clusters of galaxies

“…As we see, the neutrino flux we obtain is comparable with the diffuse neutrino background observed by IceCube for CR spectral index α = 1.5 − 2.5 and maximum energy 10 16 − 10 17 eV. A recent analysis by the IceCube Collaboration 17 found that less than ~77% of the total diffuse neutrino flux could be due to clusters. While this could, at first glance, seem in conflict with our results, we note that changes in the parameters of our analysis such as the total CR luminosity or the distribution of CR sources within the cluster could reduce our estimate.…”

“…The neutrino flux from clusters obtained in ref. 13 is comparable with observations by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory 2 , 17 . Most of the contribution to the total flux comes from clusters at redshift z ≤ 0.3 with masses M ≳ 10 14 M ⊙ .…”

Constraining High-energy Neutrino Emission from Supernovae with IceCube

“…This scrambling method is well established and preserves the structure in energy and decl. (see, e.g., Braun et al 2008;Abbasi et al 2022aAbbasi et al , 2022bAbbasi et al , 2022c.…”

High-energy Neutrino Constraints on Cosmic-Ray Reacceleration in Radio Halos of Massive Galaxy Clusters

“…Recently, Abbasi et al (2022a) reported an upper limit on the contribution of massive GCs to the diffuse muon neutrino flux derived from a stacking analysis of 1094 clusters in Planck Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) sources. The contribution from the clusters with masses of 10 14 M e < M 500 < 10 15 M e in redshift 0.01 < z < 2 is limited to be less than ∼5% at 100 TeV, although the limit strongly depends on the weighting scheme to account for the completeness of the Planck catalog.…”

“…In this paper, we discuss the possible constraints on the secondary scenario for GRHs from the neutrino stacking analysis on GCs (Abbasi et al 2022a). This can be done by calculating the neutrino flux from the population of GCs using the reacceleration model consistent with various observational properties of GRHs.…”