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Abstract The diffuse flux of cosmic neutrinos has been measured by the IceCube Observatory from TeV to PeV energies. We show that an improved characterization of this flux at lower energies, TeV and sub-TeV, reveals important information on the nature of the astrophysical neutrino sources in a model-independent way. Most significantly, it could confirm the present indications that neutrinos originate in cosmic environments that are optically thick to GeV–TeV γ -rays. This conclusion will become inevitable if an uninterrupted or even steeper neutrino power law is observed in the TeV region. In such γ -ray-obscured sources, the γ -rays that inevitably accompany cosmic neutrinos will cascade down to MeV–GeV energies. The requirement that the cascaded γ -ray flux accompanying cosmic neutrinos should not exceed the observed diffuse γ -ray background puts constraints on the peak energy and density of the radiation fields in the sources. Our calculations inspired by the existing data suggest that a fraction of the observed diffuse MeV–GeV γ -ray background may be contributed by neutrino sources with intense radiation fields that obscure the high-energy γ -ray emission accompanying the neutrinos.
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This content will become publicly available on March 7, 2026
Observation of Cosmic-Ray Anisotropy in the Southern Hemisphere with 12 yr of Data Collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
Abstract We analyzed the 7.92 × 1011cosmic-ray-induced muon events collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory from 2011 May 13, when the fully constructed experiment started to take data, to 2023 May 12. This data set provides an up-to-date cosmic-ray arrival direction distribution in the Southern Hemisphere with unprecedented statistical accuracy covering more than a full period length of a solar cycle. Improvements in Monte Carlo event simulation and better handling of year-to-year differences in data processing significantly reduce systematic uncertainties below the level of statistical fluctuations compared to the previously published results. We confirm the observation of a change in the angular structure of the cosmic-ray anisotropy between 10 TeV and 1 PeV, more specifically in the 100–300 TeV energy range. For the first time, we analyzed the angular power spectrum at different energies. The observed variations of the power spectra with energy suggest relatively reduced large-scale features at high energy compared to those of medium and small scales. The large volume of data enhances the statistical significance at higher energies, up to the PeV scale, and smaller angular scales, down to approximately 6° compared to previous findings.
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- PAR ID:
- 10604053
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- R. Abbasi et al 2025 ApJ 981 182
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 981
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 182
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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