Michael Kreter Würzburg

Search for neutrinos from flaring blazars(pdf)

Jets from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are among the best candidates for the recently detected extraterrestrial neutrino flux. Hadronic AGN jet emission models predict a tight correlation between the neutrino flux and the time-variable gamma-ray emission. At the same time, the atmospheric background (noise) signal, which often dominates in neutrino-astronomical observations, can be substantially reduced by rejecting long-lasting periods of low flux. For these reasons, short high-amplitude gamma-ray flares, as often observed in blazars, can be used to substantially increase the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes in point-source searches. We develop a strategy to search for TeV neutrinos from flaring blazar jets from the TANAMI sample using the ANTARES telescope and Fermi gamma-ray light curves.