Prospects for combined analyses of hadronic emission from $\gamma$-ray sources in the Milky Way with CTA and KM3NeT

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array and the KM3NeT neutrino telescopes are major upcoming facilities in the fields of $\gamma$-ray and neutrino astronomy, respectively. Possible simultaneous production of $\gamma$ rays and neutrinos in astrophysical accelerators of cosmic-ray nuclei motivates a combination of their data. We assess the potential of a combined analysis of CTA and KM3NeT data to determine the contribution of hadronic emission processes in known Galactic $\gamma$-ray emitters, comparing this result to the cases of two separate analyses. In doing so, we demonstrate the capability of Gammapy, an open-source software package for the analysis of $\gamma$-ray data, to also process data from neutrino telescopes. For a selection of prototypical $\gamma$-ray sources within our Galaxy, we obtain models for primary proton and electron spectra in the hadronic and leptonic emission scenario, respectively, by fitting published $\gamma$-ray spectra. Using these models and instrument response functions for both detectors, we employ the Gammapy package to generate pseudo data sets, where we assume 200 hours of CTA observations and 10 years of KM3NeT detector operation. We then apply a three-dimensional binned likelihood analysis to these data sets, separately for each instrument and jointly for both. We find that the largest benefit of the combined analysis lies in the possibility of a consistent modelling of the $\gamma$-ray and neutrino emission. Assuming a purely leptonic scenario as input, we obtain, for the most favourable source, an average expected 68% credible interval that constrains the contribution of hadronic processes to the observed $\gamma$-ray emission to below 15%.

20 pages, 16 figures. v2: Matches version published in EPJC

References in corpus (21)

• Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger
• Evidence for neutrino emission from the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068
• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• Parametrization of gamma-ray production cross-sections for pp interactions in a broad proton energy range from the kinematic threshold to PeV energies
• Prompt neutrino fluxes from atmospheric charm
• Improved Characterization of the Astrophysical Muon-Neutrino Flux with 9.5 Years of IceCube Data
• Atmospheric MUons from PArametric formulas: a fast GEnerator for neutrino telescopes (MUPAGE)
• Guaranteed and Prospective Galactic TeV Neutrino Sources
• Determining the Neutrino Mass Ordering and Oscillation Parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA
• Deep sea tests of a prototype of the KM3NeT digital optical module
• How precisely neutrino emission from supernova remnants can be constrained by gamma ray observations?
• Neutrinos from galactic sources of cosmic rays with known gamma-ray spectra
• A deep spectromorphological study of the $\gamma$-ray emission surrounding the young massive stellar cluster Westerlund 1
• Validation of open-source science tools and background model construction in $\gamma$-ray astronomy
• Prospects for Detecting Galactic Sources of Cosmic Neutrinos with IceCube: An Update
• Monte Carlo simulations for the ANTARES underwater neutrino telescope
• Pursuing the origin of the gamma rays in RX J1713.7$-$3946 quantifying the hadronic and leptonic components
• Optimizing the third generation of gravitational-wave observatories for Galactic astrophysics
• Atmospheric neutrinos and the knee of the Cosmic Ray spectrum
• Gamma rays and neutrinos from RX J1713.7-3946 in a lepto-hadronic scenario
• Sensitivity estimates for diffuse, point-like and extended neutrino sources with KM3NeT/ARCA

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Overview of the ESCAPE Dark Matter Test Science Project for Astronomers