Constraining high-energy neutrinos from tidal disruption events with IceCube high-energy starting events

TL;DR

This work tests whether tidal disruption events (TDEs) contribute to high-energy neutrinos detected by IceCube by performing a stacking, unbinned likelihood analysis that correlates IceCube's 12.5-year HESE data with 89 TDEs. The analysis finds no statistically significant spatial or temporal association, consistent with the background, and translates this null result into upper limits on the TDE jet fraction $f_{ m jet}$ and the isotropic-equivalent cosmic-ray energy $\mathcal{E}_{\rm CR}$, e.g., $\mathcal{E}_{\rm CR} \lesssim 3\times 10^{53}$ erg for $f_{ m jet} \gtrsim 0.6$ at >90% C.L. The results also yield a bound on the all-sky diffuse neutrino flux from TDEs and discuss implications for various production sites (jets, disks, winds, coronae), noting that non-jet and choked-jet scenarios remain viable given current statistics. With more EM TDE detections (e.g., from LSST) and increased neutrino data from IceCube and KM3NeT, the method can place tighter constraints on TDE physics and their contribution to the high-energy neutrino sky.

Abstract

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) have been proposed as candidate sources of high-energy neutrinos. Successful and choked jets, as well as the accretion disk, corona, wind, and outflow regions in a TDE have been examined and shown to produce TeV - PeV neutrinos. In this work, we use the IceCube 12.5 year high energy starting events (HESE) dataset and perform a maximum likelihood analysis to investigate the spatial and temporal correlations between HESE dataset and a selected sample of 89 TDEs. Our results indicate that the currently observed data do not show any significant correlation and hence is consistent with the background only hypothesis. Using this result, we place constraints on the fraction of TDEs harboring intrinsic jets ($f_{\rm jet}$) and the corresponding isotropic-equivalent cosmic ray (CR) energy ($\mathcal{E}_{\rm CR}$). We note that even with limited statistics, we can constrain the parameter space as $\mathcal{E}_{\rm CR} \lesssim 3 \times 10^{53}$ erg for $f_{\rm jet} \gtrsim 0.6$ at more than 90% C.L. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of our results and the limits on the all-sky diffuse neutrino flux from TDEs. With more observational data in the electromagnetic band for TDEs and neutrino observations from IceCube and KM3NeT, our analysis can be used to place stringent constraints on physical parameters associated with TDEs.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: Mollweide projection for the TDEs in the catalog Langis:2025btl that we select for our analysis (see the text for details). The colors and markers denote the luminosity distance of the TDEs.
• Figure 2: Mollweide projection for the HESE hesedatayuanChirkinIceCube:2023sov. We denote the 65% containment angle for each neutrino event (see the text for details). This is denoted using markers and colors depending on their size.
• Figure 3: Left: Test Statistic TS as a function of signal parameter $n_s$. We find TS$_{\rm max} = 0$ corresponding to $n_s=0$. This implies that the observational data is consistent with background-only hypothesis and shows no correlation. Right: The cumulative distribution fraction (CDF) of TS$_{\rm max}$ for $10^5$ sets of randomly generated TDEs. The blue dashed line shows the value of TS$_{90}^{\rm obs} = 0.89$ denoting that $90$% of TS$_{\rm max}$ values are less than this number.
• Figure 4: The CDF of TS$_{\rm max}$ for a combination of $f_{\rm jet}$ and $\mathcal{E}_{\rm CR}$ values. The parameters chosen are $f_{\rm jet} = \{ 0.3, 0.7 \}$ (dashed, solid respectively) and $\mathcal{E}_{\rm CR} = \{ 2.8 \times 10^{52} {\rm erg}, 6.0 \times 10^{53} {\rm erg} \}$ (brown, slate blue respectively). For each parameter set, $10^5$ realizations of signal injected mock TDE catalogs are generated to compute the CDF of TS$_{\rm max}$. The dotted black vertical line shows TS$_{90}^{\rm obs} = 0.89$.
• Figure 5: Upper limits in the $f_{\rm jet} - \mathcal{E}_{\rm CR}$ plane for jetted TDEs. The heat map shows the rejection C.L.s along with some contours. Note that even with limited statistics we can constrain the top right corner corresponding to $\mathcal{E}_{\rm CR} \gtrsim 3\times 10^{53}$ erg and $f_{\rm jet} \gtrsim 0.6$ at more than $90$% C.L.