Year of Graduation
2024
Level of Access
Open Access Thesis
Embargo Period
5-16-2024
Department or Program
Physics and Astronomy
First Advisor
Fe McBride
Abstract
Cosmic rays have been detected for over a century. While some sources have been confirmed, they cannot explain the high energy of the particles (> 10^15 eV), so it remains unclear where and how they are accelerated to extreme energies. The study of astrophysical high-energy neutrinos may help solve the puzzle. These neutrinos are produced by cosmic rays interacting with other charged particles or photons. Moreover, while cosmic rays do not reveal their sources of origin because they can be deflected by magnetic fields, cosmic neutrinos detected by the IceCube Observatory can be traced back to their sources of origin. We will consider an active galactic nucleus (AGN) as a candidate source for a high-energy neutrino.
This thesis examines the AGN WISEA J175051.31+105645.3 as a potential source for IceCube-220303A, a high-energy neutrino with a 78% probability of being astrophysical in origin. Using follow-up NuSTAR and Swift/XRT observations, WISEA J175051.31+105645.3 was the only viable source we found in IceCube-220303A’s uncertainty region. We used follow-up X-ray data to construct a multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) through which we calculated the AGN’s neutrino energy flux. This calculation yields the number of neutrinos we would expect to detect from the AGN in a given time period. We used this number to calculate the probability that IceCube-220303A was emitted by WISEA J175051.31+105645.3. Finding a statistically significant link between IceCube-220303A and WISEA J175051.31+105645.3 may help us better understand what processes can accelerate particles like cosmic rays to extreme energies and learn more about AGN.