SEARCH FOR NEUTRINOS CORRELATED WITH TIDAL DISRUPTION EVENTS IN ICECUBE

Abstract

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) occur when a star is ripped apart by the tidal forces of a supermassive black hole. TDEs are theorized to produce high energy neutrinos through photohadronic interactions between accelerated protons and multi-wavelength photons in the accretion disk and outflows. Detecting these neutrinos would identify a source class responsible for the production of high energy cosmic rays and provide insight into the dynamics of TDEs. We conduct a dedicated search for neutrinos coincident with TDEs detected in optical/UV and X-ray wavelengths, taking advantage of the recent increase in observed TDEs from wide field-of-view telescopes. We analyzed 89 TDEs using a time-dependent likelihood analysis in two parts. First, we searched for emission from individual sources, where we fit the time window of expected neutrino emission. Second, we performed a study of jetted and non-jetted TDE subpopulations using a stacked search with a fixed one year time window. No significant neutrino excess was observed in either search. The contribution of jetted and non-jetted TDEs detected in optical/UV and X-ray wavelengths to the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux is found to be less than 1.3% and 14.7%, respectively.