Neutrino lighthouse at Sagittarius A*
Abstract
We investigate whether a subset of high-energy events observed by IceCube may be due to neutrinos from Sagittarius A*. We check both spatial and temporal coincidences of IceCube events with other transient activities of Sagittarius A*. Among the seven IceCube shower events nearest to the Galactic center, we have found that event 25 has a time very close to (around three hours after) the brightest x-ray flare of Sagittarius A* observed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory with a p-value of 0.9%. Furthermore, two of the seven events occurred within one day of each other (there is a 1.6% probability that this would occur for a random distribution in time). Thus, the determination that some IceCube events occur at similar times as x-ray flares and others occur in a burst could be the smoking gun that Sagittarius A* is a point source of very-high-energy neutrinos. We point out that if IceCube Galactic center neutrino events originate from charged pion decays, then TeV gamma rays should come from neutral pion decays at a similar rate. We show that the CTA, HAWC, H.E.S.S. and VERITAS experiments should be sensitive enough to test this.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review D
- Pub Date:
- September 2014
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1407.2243
- Bibcode:
- 2014PhRvD..90f3012B
- Keywords:
-
- 95.55.Vj;
- 14.60.Lm;
- 98.35.Jk;
- Neutrino muon pion and other elementary particle detectors;
- cosmic ray detectors;
- Ordinary neutrinos (nuW bosons;
- Galactic center bar circumnuclear matter and bulge;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
- E-Print:
- 25 pages, 9 figures