The neutrino background from non-jetted active galactic nuclei

Abstract

Aims. We calculate the contribution to the neutrino background from the non-jetted active galactic nuclei (AGN) population following the recent IceCube association of TeV neutrinos with NGC 1068. Methods. We exploit our robust knowledge of the AGN X-ray luminosity function and evolution and convert it to the neutrino band by using NGC 1068 as a benchmark and a theoretically motivated neutrino spectrum. Results. The resulting neutrino background up to redshift 5 does not violate either the IceCube diffuse flux or the upper bounds for non-jetted AGN, although barely so. This is consistent with a scenario where the latter class makes a substantial contribution mostly below 1 PeV, while jetted AGN, i.e. blazars, dominate above this energy, in intriguing agreement with the dip in the neutrino data at ~ 300 TeV. More and better IceCube data on Seyfert galaxies will allow us to constrain the fraction of neutrino emitters among non-jetted AGN.

4 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters

References in corpus (10)

• The synthesis of the cosmic X-ray background in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era
• Toward the Standard Population Synthesis Model of the X-Ray Background: Evolution of X-Ray Luminosity and Absorption Functions of Active Galactic Nuclei Including Compton-Thick Populations
• Active Galactic Nuclei: what's in a name?
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey - V. X-ray properties of the Swift/BAT 70-month AGN catalog
• The Chandra Deep Field-South Survey: 7 Ms Source Catalogs
• X-ray spectral properties of AGN in the Chandra Deep Field South
• The Evolution of Obscuration in AGN
• BASS XXII: The BASS DR2 AGN Catalog and Data
• On the two main classes of Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Spectra of IceCube Neutrino (SIN) candidate sources -- II. Source Characterisation

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Revealing the Production Mechanism of High-Energy Neutrinos from NGC 1068