An exploration of hadronic interactions in blazars using IceCube

Abstract

Context: Hadronic models, involving matter (proton or nuclei) acceleration in blazar jets, imply high energy photon and neutrino emissions due to interactions of high-energy protons with matter and/or radiation in the source environment. Aims: This paper shows that the sensitivity of the IceCube neutrino telescope in its 40-string configuration (IC-40) is already at the level of constraining the parameter space of purely hadronic scenarios of activity of blazars. Methods: Assuming that the entire source power originates from hadronic interactions, and assuming that the models describe the data, we estimate the expected neutrino flux from blazars based on the observed gamma-ray flux by Fermi, simultaneously with IC-40 observations. We consider two cases separately to keep the number of constrainable parameters at an acceptable level: proton-proton or proton-gamma interactions are dominant. Comparing the IC-40 sensitivity to the neutrino flux expected from some of the brightest blazars, we constrain model parameters characterizing the parent high-energy proton spectrum. Results: We find that when pp interactions dominate, some constraints on the primary proton spectrum can be imposed. For instance, for the tightest constrained source 3C 454.3, the very high energy part of the spectra of blazars is constrained to be harder than E^-2 with cut-off energies in the range of Ecut >10^18 eV. When interactions of high-energy protons on soft photon fields dominate, we can find similarly tight constraints on the proton spectrum parameters. [abridged]

accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (10)

• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• MAGIC discovery of VHE Emission from the FSRQ PKS 1222+21
• Fast variability of TeV gamma-rays from the radio galaxy M 87
• Energy spectra of gamma-rays, electrons and neutrinos produced at interactions of relativistic protons with low energy radiation
• Time-Integrated Searches for Point-like Sources of Neutrinos with the 40-String IceCube Detector
• Gamma-ray flares from red giant/jet interactions in AGN
• Observations of the Blazar 3C 66A with the MAGIC Telescopes in Stereoscopic Mode
• IceCube Sensitivity for Neutrino Flux from Fermi Blazars in Quiescent States
• Measuring parameters of AGN central engines with very high energy gamma-ray flares
• IceCube expectations for two high-energy neutrino production models at active galactic nuclei

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Evidence for the Galactic contribution to the IceCube astrophysical neutrino flux
• PeV neutrinos from interactions of cosmic rays with the interstellar medium in the Galaxy
• Sensitivity of a proposed space-based Cerenkov astrophysical-neutrino telescope (CHANT)
• Self-consistent neutrino and UHE cosmic ray spectra from Mrk 421
• Strong constraint on hadronic models of blazar activity from Fermi and IceCube stacking analysis
• Multiwavelength Study of the Quiescent States of Six Brightest Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars detected by Fermi-LAT
• Self-consistent model of extragalactic neutrino flux from evolving blazar population
• Neutrino signal from extended Galactic sources in IceCube
• Blazars Jets and prospects for TeV-PeV neutrinos & gamma-rays through cosmic-ray interactions
• Results and prospects of deep under-ground, under-water and under-ice experiments
• Hadronic origin of gamma rays and neutrinos from blazars: Multi-messenger implications and observational constraints