The physical properties of candidate neutrino-emitter blazars

Abstract

The processes governing the production of astrophysical high-energy neutrinos are still debated, and the sources originating them remain an open question. Among the putative emitters, active galactic nuclei have gained increasing attention. Blazars, in particular, stand out due to their ability to accelerate particles in environments with external radiation fields. Recent observations suggest they may contribute to the neutrino flux detected by IceCube. We study the physical properties of a subsample of 52 blazars proposed as candidate neutrino emitters, based on a positional cross-correlation analysis between IceCube hotspots and the 5BZCat catalog. We aim to provide a first characterization of their central engines and physical nature, to explore the potential link with neutrino production. We analyze the optical spectroscopic properties of the 52 candidate neutrino-emitter blazars to infer their accretion regime. The study is complemented by radio and $\gamma$-ray data, which trace the intrinsic jet power. We compare the sample to other blazar populations in the literature, perform statistical tests, and explore, through simulations, the applicability of methods that include censored data. Overall, the target sample shows properties compatible with the reference samples. We observe a mild tendency to prefer objects with intense radiation fields, typical of radiatively efficient accretors, and high radio power. Among them, 24 are detected by Fermi-LAT, spanning various $\gamma$-ray luminosities. We also show that statistical tests commonly used in the literature need to be handled with caution, as they are sensitive to the number of censored data and the sample size.

22 pages, 8 figures, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics

References in corpus (35)

• A Catalog of Quasar Properties from SDSS DR7
• The Co-Evolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe
• Molecfit: A general tool for telluric absorption correction. I. Method and application to ESO instruments
• Observation and Characterization of a Cosmic Muon Neutrino Flux from the Northern Hemisphere using six years of IceCube data
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Bright Gamma-ray Source List
• Molecfit: A general tool for telluric absorption correction II. Quantitative evaluation on ESO-VLT X-Shooter spectra
• CRATES: An All-Sky Survey of Flat-Spectrum Radio Sources
• Time-integrated Neutrino Source Searches with 10 years of IceCube Data
• The power of relativistic jets is larger than the luminosity of their accretion disks
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey I: Spectral Measurements, Derived Quantities, and AGN Demographics
• All-sky search for time-integrated neutrino emission from astrophysical sources with 7 years of IceCube data
• The blazar sequence: a new perspective
• CGRaBS: An All-Sky Survey of Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates
• The contribution of Fermi-2LAC blazars to the diffuse TeV-PeV neutrino flux
• The Spectral Energy Distributions of Fermi Blazars
• TXS 0506+056, the first cosmic neutrino source, is not a BL Lac
• The Central Engines of Fermi Blazars
• On the redshift of TeV BL Lac objects
• The jet-disc connection in AGN
• General Physical Properties of CGRaBS Blazars
• On the geometry of broad emission region in quasars
• Leptonic and Hadronic Radiative Processes in Supermassive-Black-Hole Jets
• Beginning a journey across the universe: the discovery of extragalactic neutrino factories
• The Sedentary Survey of Extreme High Energy Peaked BL Lacs III. Results from Optical Spectroscopy
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates II. The 2013 KPNO campaign in the Northern Hemisphere
• The Nature of Transition Blazars
• White dwarf-main sequence binaries from LAMOST: the DR1 catalogue
• Optical spectroscopy of BL Lac objects: TeV candidates
• Basic properties of Fermi blazars and the "blazar sequence"
• The Spectra of IceCube Neutrino (SIN) candidate sources -- II. Source Characterisation
• An optical overview of blazars with LAMOST I: Hunting changing-look blazars and new redshift estimates
• PKS 1424+240: yet another masquerading BL Lac object as a possible IceCube neutrino source
• The long-term centimeter variability of active galactic nuclei: A new relation between variability timescale and accretion rate
• An extensive study of blazar broad emission line: Changing-look blazars and Baldwin effect
• The spectra of IceCube Neutrino (SIN) candidate sources -- III. Optical spectroscopy and source characterization of the full sample