Search for High-energy Neutrinos from Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies with IceCube

• Published in: The Astrophysical Journal
• Main Authors: Abbasi, R., Ackermann, Markus, Andeen, K., Fox, D., Franckowiak, A., Friedman, E., Fritz, A., Fürst, P., Gaisser, T. K., Gallagher, J., Ganster, E., Garcia, Alfonso, Garrappa, Simone, Anderson, T., Gerhardt, L., Ghadimi, A., Glaser, C., Glauch, T., Glüsenkamp, T., Goldschmidt, A., Gonzalez, J. G., Goswami, S., Grant, D., Grégoire, T., Anton, G., Griswold, S., Gündüz, M., Günther, C., Haack, C., Hallgren, A., Halliday, R., Halve, L., Halzen, F., Minh, M. Ha, Hanson, K., Argüelles, C., Hardin, J., Harnisch, A. A., Haungs, A., Hauser, S., Hebecker, D., Helbing, K., Henningsen, F., Hettinger, E. C., Hickford, S., Hignight, J., Ashida, Y., Hill, C., Hill, G. C., Hoffman, K. D.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Univ. 2022
• Subjects: info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/520; neutrino: flux; neutrino: energy: high; infrared; star: formation; IceCube; galaxy; TeV; AGN; background; power spectrum; observatory; redshift; stacking; pole; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/476017; https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/search?p=id:%22PUBDB-2022-01558%22

Ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) have infrared luminosities L $_{IR}$ ≥ 10$^{12}$ L $_{⊙}$, making them the most luminous objects in the infrared sky. These dusty objects are generally powered by starbursts with star formation rates that exceed 100 M $_{⊙}$ yr$^{−1}$, possibly combined with a contribution from an active galactic nucleus. Such environments make ULIRGs plausible sources of astrophysical high-energy neutrinos, which can be observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. We present a stacking search for high-energy neutrinos from a representative sample of 75 ULIRGs with redshift z ≤ 0.13 using 7.5 yr of IceCube data. The results are consistent with a background-only observation, yielding upper limits on the neutrino flux from these 75 ULIRGs. For an unbroken E $^{−2.5}$ power-law spectrum, we report an upper limit on the stacked flux at 90% confidence level. In addition, we constrain the contribution of the ULIRG source population to the observed diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux as well as model predictions.