“Search for a hidden population as sources of the cosmic neutrino flux detected by the IceCube observatory at the South Pole”

Project Details

Description

Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are the most energetic particles ever observed at Earth. However, their origin is still unclear. During the extreme acceleration processes at their sources, hadronic interactions are expected to create high-energy neutrinos. If detected at Earth, these point directly back to their source, since they are electrically neutral and only interact weakly. Thus, finding the sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos might solve the problem of the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray origin, and also give further insight in the extreme environments in which they are accelerated. This is the goal of the proposed project.

The IceCube collaboration discovered high-energy cosmic neutrinos in 2013. Furthermore, electromagnetically bright sources such as Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) have been largely excluded as the origin of these neutrinos. Therefore, within the IceCube group at the Interuniversity Institute for High Energies (IIHE) in Brussels it was argued that the sources for the high-energy cosmic neutrinos could be electromagnetically dim for observers at Earth, i.e. the sources would be hidden, due to an obscuring gas or dust surrounding them. This seems to be supported by gamma-ray data from the Fermi satellite. In the proposed project, a population of such objects will be investigated with the purpose to possibly identify them as sources of the high-energy cosmic neutrino flux detected by the IceCube observatory.
AcronymFWOTM848
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date1/10/1730/09/21

Keywords

  • cosmic neutrino flux
  • IceCube observatory

Flemish discipline codes in use since 2023

  • High energy astrophysics, astroparticle physics and cosmic rays

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