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

• Main Authors: Abbasi, R., Ackermann, M., Adams, J., Aguilar, J. A., Ahlers, M., Ahrens, M., Alispach, C., Alves, A. A., Amin, N. M., An, R., Andeen, K., Anderson, T., Anton, G., Argüelles, C., Ashida, Y., Axani, S., Bai, X., V., A. Balagopal, Barbano, A., Barwick, S. W., Bastian, B., Basu, V., Baur, S., Bay, R., Beatty, J. J., Becker, K.-H., Tjus, J. Becker, Bellenghi, C., BenZvi, S., Berley, D., Bernardini, E., Besson, D. Z., Binder, G., Bindig, D., Blaufuss, E., Blot, S., Boddenberg, M., Bontempo, F., Borowka, J., Böser, S., Botner, O., Böttcher, J., Bourbeau, E., Bradascio, F., Braun, J., Bron, S., Brostean-Kaiser, J., Browne, S., Burgman, A., Burley, R. T., Busse, R. S., Campana, M. A., Carnie-Bronca, E. G., Chen, C., Chirkin, D., Choi, K., Clark, B. A., Clark, K., Classen, L., Coleman, A., Collin, G. H., Conrad, J. M., Coppin, P., Correa, P., Cowen, D. F., Cross, R., Dappen, C., Dave, P., De Clercq, C., DeLaunay, J. J., Dembinski, H., Deoskar, K., De Ridder, S., Desai, A., Desiati, P., de Vries, K. D., de Wasseige, G., de With, M., DeYoung, T., Dharani, S., Diaz, A., Díaz-Vélez, J. C., Dittmer, M., Dujmovic, H., Dunkman, M., DuVernois, M. A., Dvorak, E., Ehrhardt, T., Eller, P., Engel, R., Erpenbeck, H., Evans, J., Evenson, P. A., Fan, K. L., Fazely, A. R., Fiedlschuster, S., Fienberg, A. T., Filimonov, K., Finley, C., Fischer, L.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 2022
• Subjects: 520 Astronomie und zugeordnete Wissenschaften; 530 Physik; ddc:520; ddc:530; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/18452/27002; https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-110-18452/27002-0; https://doi.org/10.18452/26322; https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3cb6

Ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) have infrared luminosities LIR ≥ 1012L⊙, 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 ${{\rm{\Phi }}}_{{\nu }_{\mu }+{\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }}^{90 \% }=3.24\times {10}^{-14}\,{\mathrm{TeV}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}\,{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}\,{(E/10\,\mathrm{TeV})}^{-2.5}$ 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. Peer Reviewed