On the Detection Potential of Blazar Flares for Current Neutrino Telescopes

Abstract

Blazar jets are extreme environments, in which relativistic proton interactions with an ultraviolet photon field could give rise to photopion production. High-confidence associations of individual high-energy neutrinos with blazar flares could be achieved via spatially and temporally coincident detections. In 2017, the track-like, extremely high-energy neutrino event IC 170922A was found to coincide with increased $\gamma$-ray emission from the blazar TXS 0506+056, leading to the identification of the most promising neutrino point source candidate so far. We calculate the expected number of neutrino events that can be detected with IceCube, based on a broadband parametrization of bright short-term blazar flares that were observed in the first 6.5 years of \textit{Fermi}/LAT observations. We find that the integrated keV-to-GeV fluence of most individual blazar flares is far too small to yield a substantial Poisson probability for the detection of one or more neutrinos with IceCube. We show that the sample of potentially detectable high-energy neutrinos from individual blazar flares is rather small. We further show that the blazars 3C 279 and PKS 1510$-$089 dominate the all-sky neutrino prediction from bright and short-term blazar flares. In the end, we discuss strategies to search for more significant associations in future data unblindings of IceCube and KM3NeT.

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Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Long-term multi-wavelength study of 1ES 0647+250
• $Fermi$-LAT follow-up observations in seven years of real-time high-energy neutrino alerts
• Blazar jets as possible sources of ultra-high energy photons: a short review
• Assessing coincident neutrino detections using population models
• Time-dependent modelling of short-term variability in the TeV-blazar VER J0521+211 during the major flare in 2020
• Optimizing the hunt for extraterrestrial high-energy neutrino counterparts
• Constraints on magnetic field and particle content in blazar jets through optical circular polarization