skip to main content

Attention:

The NSF Public Access Repository (PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 11:00 PM ET on Thursday, February 13 until 2:00 AM ET on Friday, February 14 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.


Title: Very long baseline interferometry radio structure and radio brightening of the high-energy neutrino emitting blazar TXS 0506+056
ABSTRACT

We report on the radio brightening of the blazar TXS 0506+056 (at z = 0.3365), and we support its identification by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory as a source of the high-energy (HE) neutrino IC-170922A. Data from the Monitoring Of Jets in AGN with VLBA Experiments (MOJAVE)/Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) survey indicate that its radio brightness has abruptly increased since 2016 January. When decomposing the total radio flux density curve (in the period 2008 January to 2018 July), provided by the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, into eight Gaussian flares, the peak time of the largest flare overlaps with the HE neutrino detection, while the total flux density has exhibited a threefold increase since 2016 January. We reveal the radio structure of TXS 0506+056 by analysing very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) data from the MOJAVE/VLBA survey. The jet components maintain quasi-stationary core separations. The structure of the ridge line is indicative of a jet curve in the region 0.5–2 mas (2.5–9.9 pc projected) from the VLBI core. The brightness temperature of the core and the pc-scale radio morphology support a helical jet structure at small inclination angle (<8${^{\circ}_{.}}$2). The jet pointing towards the Earth is a key property facilitating multimessenger observations (HE neutrinos, γ-rays and radio flares). The radio brightening preceding the detection of a HE neutrino is similar to the one reported for the blazar PKS 0723–008 and IceCube event ID5.

 
more » « less
PAR ID:
10485825
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Oxford University Press
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Volume:
483
Issue:
1
ISSN:
1745-3925
Format(s):
Medium: X Size: p. L42-L46
Size(s):
p. L42-L46
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Several tentative associations between high-energy neutrinos and astrophysical sources have been recently reported, but a conclusive identification of these potential neutrino emitters remains challenging. We explore the use of Monte Carlo simulations of source populations to gain deeper insight into the physical implications of proposed individual source–neutrino associations. In particular, we focus on the IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 observation. Assuming a null model, we find a 7.6% chance of mistakenly identifying coincidences between γ -ray flares from blazars and neutrino alerts in 10-year surveys. We confirm that a blazar–neutrino connection based on the γ -ray flux is required to find a low chance coincidence probability and, therefore, a significant IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 association. We then assume this blazar–neutrino connection for the whole population and find that the ratio of neutrino to γ -ray fluxes must be ≲10 −2 in order not to overproduce the total number of neutrino alerts seen by IceCube. For the IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 association to make sense, we must either accept this low flux ratio or suppose that only some rare sub-population of blazars is capable of high-energy neutrino production. For example, if we consider neutrino production only in blazar flares, we expect the flux ratio of between 10 −3 and 10 −1 to be consistent with a single coincident observation of a neutrino alert and flaring γ -ray blazar. These constraints should be interpreted in the context of the likelihood models used to find the IC170922A–TXS 0506+056 association, which assumes a fixed power-law neutrino spectrum of E −2.13 for all blazars. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract

    On 2022 September 18, an alert by the IceCube Collaboration indicated that a ∼170 TeV neutrino arrived in directional coincidence with the blazar TXS 0506+056. This event adds to two previous pieces of evidence that TXS 0506+056 is a neutrino emitter, i.e., a neutrino alert from its direction on 2017 September 22, and a 3σsignature of a dozen neutrinos in 2014/2015. De Bruijn el al. showed that two previous neutrino emission episodes from this blazar could be due to a supermassive binary black hole (SMBBH) central engine where jet precession close to the final coalescence of the binary results in periodic emission. This model predicted a new emission episode consistent with the 2022 September 18 neutrino observation by IceCube. Here, we show that the neutrino cadence of TXS 0506+056 is consistent with an SMBBH origin. We find that the emission episodes are consistent with an SMBBH with mass ratiosq≲ 0.3 for a total black hole mass ofMtot≳ 3 · 108M. For the first time, we calculate the characteristic strain of the gravitational wave emission of the binary, and show that the merger could be detectable by LISA for black hole masses <5 · 108Mif the mass ratios are in the range 0.1 ≲q≲ 0.3. We predict that there can be a neutrino flare existing in the still-to-be-analyzed IceCube data peaking some time between 2019 August and 2021 January if a precessing jet is responsible for all three detected emission episodes. The next flare is expected to peak in the period 2023 January to 2026 August. Further observation will make it possible to constrain the mass ratio as a function of the total mass of the black hole more precisely and would open the window toward the preparation of the detection of SMBBH mergers.

     
    more » « less
  3. Abstract

    Gamma-ray flares of blazars may be accompanied by high-energy neutrinos due to interactions of high-energy cosmic rays in the jet with photons, as suggested by the detection of the high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A during a major gamma-ray flare from blazar TXS 0506+056 at the ∼3σsignificance level. In this work, we present a statistical study of gamma-ray emission from blazars to constrain the contribution of gamma-ray flares to their neutrino output. We construct weekly binned light curves for 145 gamma-ray bright blazars in the Fermi Large Area Telescope Monitored Source List adding TXS 0506+056. We derive the fraction of time spent in the flaring state (flare duty cycle) and the fraction of energy released during each flare from the light curves with a Bayesian blocks algorithm. We find that blazars with lower flare duty cycles and energy fractions are more numerous among our sample. We identify a significant difference in flare duty cycles between blazar subclasses at a significance level of 5%. Then using a general scaling relation for the neutrino and gamma-ray luminosities,Lν(Lγ)γwith a weighting exponent ofγ= 1.0–2.0, normalized to the quiescent gamma-ray or X-ray flux of each blazar, we evaluate the neutrino energy flux of each gamma-ray flare. The gamma-ray flare distribution indicates that blazar neutrino emission may be dominated by flares forγ≳ 1.5. The neutrino energy fluxes for 1 week and 10 yr bins are compared with the decl.-dependent IceCube sensitivity to constrain the standard neutrino emission models for gamma-ray flares. Finally, we present the upper-limit contribution of blazar gamma-ray flares to the isotropic diffuse neutrino flux.

     
    more » « less
  4. Abstract

    The IceCube Neutrino Observatory sends realtime neutrino alerts with a high probability of being astrophysical in origin. We present a new method to correlate these events and possible candidate sources using 2089 blazars from the Fermi-LAT 4LAC-DR2 catalog and with 3413 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the Radio Fundamental Catalog. No statistically significant neutrino emission was found in any of the catalog searches. The result suggests that a small fraction, <1%, of the studied AGNs emit neutrinos that pass the alert criteria, and is compatible with prior evidence for neutrino emission presented by IceCube and other authors from sources such as TXS 0506 + 056 and PKS 1502 + 106. We also present cross-checks to other analyses that claim a significant correlation using similar data samples.

     
    more » « less
  5. Abstract Neutrino astronomy saw its birth with the discovery by IceCube of a difFuse flux at energies above 60 TeV with intensity comparable to a predicted upper limit to the flux from extra-galactic sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). While such an upper limit corresponds to the case of calorimetric sources, in which cosmic rays lose all their energy into photo-pion production, the first statistically significant coincident observation between neutrinos and gamma-rays was observed from a blazar of intriguing nature. A very-high-energy muon event, of most probable neutrino energy of 290 TeV for an E −2.13 spectrum, alerted other observatories triggering a large amount of investigations in many bands of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. A high gamma-ray state from the blazar was revealed soon after the event and in a follow up to about 40 days. A posteriori observations also in the optical and in the radio indicated a rise of the flux from the TXS 0506+056 blazar. A previous excess of events of duration of more than 100 d was observed by IceCube with higher significance than the alert itself. These observations triggered more complex modelling than simple one zone proton synchrotron models for proton acceleration in jets of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and more observations across the EM spectrum. A second evidence was a steady excess of about 50 neutrino events with reconstructed soft spectrum in a sample of lower energy well reconstructed muon events than the alert event. A hot spot was identified in a catalogue of 110 gamma-ray intense emitters and starburst galaxies in a direction compatible to NGC 1068 with significance of 2.9 σ . NGC 1068 hosts a mildly relativistic jet in a starburst galaxy, seen not from the jet direction but rather through the torus. This Seyfert II galaxy is at only 14.4 Mpc from the Earth. The source turned out to be also the hottest spot of an all-sky search. Analysed cumulatively, the catalogue excess was 3.3 σ with the contribution of NGC 1068 and TXS 0506+056, as expected, and other 2 sources, PKS 1424+240, and GB6 J1542+6129, with similar features to TXS 0506+056, indicating that they might all be Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs). While all these observations and the directions of the measured events contributing to diffuse fluxes hint to their extra-galactic origin, a few percent level contribution might be the end of a lower energy ‘granted’ flux of neutrinos from interactions of cosmic rays in the Galactic Plane. This relevant observation is at the reach of IceCube and other neutrino telescopes. These aspects were discussed at the conference and are summarised in this write up. 
    more » « less