IceCube Sensitivity for Neutrino Flux from Fermi Blazars in Quiescent States
arXiv:0905.0509 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.80.083008
Abstract
We investigate the IceCube detection potential of very high energy neutrinos from blazars, for different classes of "hadronic" models, taking into account the limits imposed on the neutrino flux by the recent Fermi telescope observations. Assuming the observed gamma-ray emission is produced by the decay of neutral pions from proton-proton interactions, the measurement of the time-averaged spectral characteristics of blazars in the GeV energy band imposes upper limits on the time-averaged neutrino flux. Comparing these upper limits to the 5 sigma discovery threshold of IceCube for different neutrino spectra and different source locations in the sky, we find that several BL Lacs with hard spectra in the GeV band are within the detection potential of IceCube. If the gamma-ray emission is dominated by the neutral pion decay flux, none of the flat-spectrum radio quasars are detectable with IceCube. If the primary high energy proton spectrum is very hard and/or neutrinos are produced in proton-photon, rather than proton-proton reactions, the upper limit on the neutrino flux imposed by the measured gamma-ray spectra is relaxed and gamma-ray observations impose only lower bounds on the neutrino flux. We investigate whether these lower bounds guarantee the detection of blazars with very hard neutrino spectra, expected in the latter type model. We show that all the "hadronic" models of activity of blazars are falsifiable with IceCube. Furthermore, we show that models with gamma-ray emission produced by the decay of neutral pions from proton-proton interactions can be readily distinguished from the models based on proton-gamma interactions and/or models predicting very hard high energy proton spectra via a study of the distribution of spectral indices of gamma-ray spectra of sources detected with IceCube.
arXiv comment10 pages, 5 figures
References in corpus (28)
- The Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Mission
- A Unifying View of the Spectral Energy Distributions of Blazars
- Energy spectra of gamma-rays, electrons and neutrinos produced at proton-proton interactions in the very high energy regime
- EGRET Observations of the Extragalactic Gamma Ray Emission
- Particle Physics with High Energy Neutrinos
- TeV Gamma Rays from BL Lac Objects due to Synchrotron Radiation of Extremely High Energy Protons
- Bright AGN Source List from the First Three Months of the Fermi Large Area Telescope All-Sky Survey
- The IceCube Data Acquisition System: Signal Capture, Digitization, and Timestamping
- A new determination of the extragalactic diffuse gamma-ray background from EGRET data
- Very High Energy Gamma-Rays from AGN: Cascading on the Cosmic Background Radiation Fields and the Formation of Pair Halos
- Production of TeV gamma-radiation in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in the giant radiogalaxy M87
- Gamma-ray induced cascades and magnetic fields in intergalactic medium
- Variable VHE gamma-ray emission from non-blazar AGNs
- High Energy Neutrinos from the TeV Blazar 1ES 1959+650
- Which blazars are neutrino loud?
- Five years of searches for point sources of astrophysical neutrinos with the AMANDA-II neutrino telescope
- Study of TeV Neutrinos with Upward Showering Muons in Super-Kamiokande
- A method of measurement of extragalactic magnetic fields by TeV gamma ray telescopes
- Search for Point Sources of High Energy Neutrinos with Final Data from AMANDA-II
- Prospects for identifying the sources of the Galactic cosmic rays with IceCube
- On the selection of AGN neutrino source candidates for a source stacking analysis with neutrino telescopes
- High energy neutrino astronomy using upward-going muons in Super-Kamiokande-I
- Measuring parameters of AGN central engines with very high energy gamma-ray flares
- Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray Accelerators in the Cygnus Region of the Galaxy
- Intergalactic absorption and blazar gamma-ray spectra
- Neutrino signal from gamma-ray loud binaries powered by high energy protons
- The diffuse neutrino flux from the inner Galaxy: constraints from very high energy gamma-ray observations
- The Extragalactic Neutrino Background Radiations From Blazars and Cosmic Rays
Cited by in corpus (17)
- Secondary photons and neutrinos from cosmic rays produced by distant blazars
- A lepto-hadronic model for high-energy emission from FR I radiogalaxies
- High energy neutrino flux from individual blazar flares
- Very High-Energy Gamma-Ray Follow-Up Program Using Neutrino Triggers from IceCube
- Time-Dependent Searches for Point Sources of Neutrinos with the 40-String and 22-String Configurations of IceCube
- Strong constraint on hadronic models of blazar activity from Fermi and IceCube stacking analysis
- High-energy emitting BL Lacs and high-energy neutrinos - Prospects for the direct association with IceCube and KM3NeT
- An exploration of hadronic interactions in blazars using IceCube
- Neutrino signal from extended Galactic sources in IceCube
- Radio-to-gamma-ray synchrotron and neutrino emission from proton-proton interactions in active galactic nuclei
- Searching for tau neutrinos with Cherenkov telescopes
- Search for muon-neutrino emission from GeV and TeV gamma-ray flaring blazars using five years of data of the ANTARES telescope
- Gamma-ray flares and broadband spectral study of PKS 0402-362
- Neutrino emission of Fermi supernova remnants
- Multi-messenger emission from the parsec-scale jet of the flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS 1502+106 coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-190730A
- Multi wavelength study of 4C+28.07
- Physics and astrophysics with gamma-ray telescopes