Speaker
Description
Since the detection of high-energy cosmic neutrinos at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in 2013, there has been an on-going search to find suitable transient or variable source candidates. Previous analyses testing core-collapse supernovae, GRBs and time-integrated blazar emission have lead to constraints disfavouring these sources as dominant contributors to the observed neutrino flux. However, Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) represent a promising untested source class. A TDE occurs when a star passes close to a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH), and the extreme tidal forces then cause the star to disintegrate. The stellar debris is accreted onto the SMBH, and can produce highly-relativistic particle jets which significantly exceed the Eddington Luminosity that normally limits SMBH-accretion. Various models have predicted neutrino emission from both jetted and non-jetted TDEs, at levels comparable to IceCube’s sensitivity. An analysis will be presented that tests time-dependent correlation between TDEs and neutrinos, using several years of IceCube data.
