Evidence for neutrino emission from the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068

Icecube Collaboration

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

175 Scopus citations

Abstract

A supermassive black hole, obscured by cosmic dust, powers the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068. Neutrinos, which rarely interact with matter, could provide information on the galaxy's active core. We searched for neutrino emission from astrophysical objects using data recorded with the IceCube neutrino detector between 2011 and 2020. The positions of 110 known gamma-ray sources were individually searched for neutrino detections above atmospheric and cosmic backgrounds. We found that NGC 1068 has an excess of 79+2220 neutrinos at tera-electron volt energies, with a global significance of 4.2σ, which we interpret as associated with the active galaxy. The flux of high-energy neutrinos that we measured from NGC 1068 is more than an order of magnitude higher than the upper limit on emissions of tera-electron volt gamma rays from this source.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)538-543
Number of pages6
JournalScience
Volume378
Issue number6619
DOIs
StatePublished - 4 Nov 2022

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