27–29 Jul 2026
Canada/Eastern timezone

Searching for astrophysical neutrino sources with high energy neutrino detectors

29 Jul 2026, 14:00
30m

Speaker

Jessie Thwaites (Queen's University)

Description

One of the key open questions of high energy astrophysics is the nature of astrophysical particle accelerators. Neutrinos may hold the key to solving this mystery: if protons are being accelerated in addition to electrons in the source, neutrinos will be produced alongside their electromagnetic radiation, providing a clear signature for the type of particles involved. Using signatures from multiple messenger particles, including neutrinos, gamma-rays, and gravitational waves, can provide meaningful constraints on particle acceleration in those sources. In 2013, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory first announced the detection of a TeV - PeV flux of astrophysical neutrinos, although the source of the vast majority of those neutrinos remains unknown. In this talk, I will discuss an analysis for IceCube neutrinos from extreme BL Lac objects, where recent modeling efforts of the full electromagnetic spectrum can be used to provide a neutrino expectation for the search. Results from the neutrino search will provide important constraints to understanding particle acceleration mechanisms in these sources. I will also give an outlook for a new Canadian-led neutrino detector, the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE), which will be deploying its first line soon and will have good sensitivity to Galactic neutrino sources.

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