Searching for High-energy Neutrino Emission from Galaxy Clusters with IceCube
Rasha Abbasi, M. Ackermann, J. Adams, J. A. Aguilar, M. Ahlers, M. Ahrens, Jean-Marco Alameddine, A. A. Alves, N. M. Amin, K. Andeen, T. Anderson, G. Anton, C. Argüelles, Yosuke Ashida, S. Athanasiadou, Spencer Axani, X. Bai, Aswathi Balagopal, M. Baricevic, S. W. Barwick, Vedant Basu, R. Bay, J. J. Beatty, K. H. Becker, J. Becker Tjus, Jakob Beise, Chiara Bellenghi, S. Benda, S. BenZvi, D. Berley, E. Bernardini, D. Besson, G. Binder, D. Bindig, E. Blaufuss, Summer Blot, Federico Bontempo, Julia Book, Jürgen Borowka, S. Böser, O. Botner, J. Böttcher, Etienne Bourbeau, Federica Bradascio, J. Braun, Bennett Brinson, S. Bron, Jannes Brostean-Kaiser, Ryan T. Burley, Raffaela Busse, Michael Campana, Erin Carnie-Bronca, Kunal Deoskar, Z. Chen, D. Chirkin, K. Choi, Brian Clark, K. Clark, Lew Classen, Alan Coleman, G. H. Collin, A. Connolly, J. M. Conrad, Paul Coppin, Pablo Correa, D. F. Cowen, R. Cross, Christian Dappen, Pranav Dave, C. De Clercq, James DeLaunay, Diyaselis Delgado, H.-P. Dembinski, Kunal Deoskar, Abhishek Desai, P. Desiati, K. D. de Vries, G. de Wasseige, T. DeYoung, A. Diaz, J. C. Díaz–Vélez, Markus Dittmer, Hrvoje Dujmović, M. A. DuVernois, Thomas Ehrhardt, P. Eller, R. Engel, Hannah Erpenbeck, John Evans, P. A. Evenson, Kwok Lung Fan, A. R. Fazely, Anatoli Fedynitch, Nora Feigl, Sebastian Fiedlschuster, Aaron Fienberg, C. Finley, Leander Fischer, D. B. Fox, A. Franckowiak
Abstract
Abstract Galaxy clusters have the potential to accelerate cosmic rays (CRs) to ultrahigh energies via accretion shocks or embedded CR acceleration sites. The CRs with energies below the Hillas condition will be confined within the cluster and eventually interact with the intracluster medium gas to produce secondary neutrinos and gamma rays. Using 9.5 yr of muon neutrino track events from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, we report the results of a stacking analysis of 1094 galaxy clusters with masses ≳10 14 M ⊙ and redshifts between 0.01 and ∼1 detected by the Planck mission via the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect. We find no evidence for significant neutrino emission and report upper limits on the cumulative unresolved neutrino flux from massive galaxy clusters after accounting for the completeness of the catalog up to a redshift of 2, assuming three different weighting scenarios for the stacking and three different power-law spectra. Weighting the sources according to mass and distance, we set upper limits at a 90% confidence level that constrain the flux of neutrinos from massive galaxy clusters (≳10 14 M ⊙ ) to be no more than 4.6% of the diffuse IceCube observations at 100 TeV, assuming an unbroken E −2.5 power-law spectrum.