Search for Neutrino Emission from Hard X-Ray AGN with IceCube
(2025) Astrophysical Journal — Vol. 981 (2025)
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- Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising candidate sources of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, since they provide environments rich in matter and photon targets where cosmic-ray interactions may lead to the production of gamma rays and neutrinos. We searched for high-energy neutrino emission from AGN using the Swift-BAT Spectroscopic Survey catalog of hard X-ray sources and 12 yr of IceCube muon track data. First, upon performing a stacked search, no significant emission was found. Second, we searched for neutrinos from a list of 43 candidate sources and found an excess from the direction of two sources, the Seyfert galaxies NGC 1068 and NGC 4151. We observed NGC 1068 at flux ϕνμ+ν¯μ= 4.02−1.52+1.58×10−11TeV$^{−1}$ cm$^{−2}$ s$^{−1}$ normalized at 1 TeV, with a power-law spectral index γ = 3.10−0.22+0.26, consistent with previous IceCube results. The observation of a neutrino excess from the direction of NGC 4151 is at a posttrial significance of 2.9σ. If interpreted as an astrophysical signal, the excess observed from NGC 4151 corresponds to a flux ϕνμ+ν¯μ= 1.51−0.81+0.99×10−11TeV$^{−1}$ cm$^{−2}$ s$^{−1}$ normalized at 1 TeV and γ = 2.83−0.28+0.35.
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de Wasseige, G., Genton, E., Kruiswijk, K., Lamoureux, M., Lazar, J., Raab, C., Myhr, P., Vereecken, M., IceCube, & et al. (2025). Search for Neutrino Emission from Hard X-Ray AGN with IceCube. Astrophysical Journal, 981. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ada94b (Original work published 2025)