Constraining the neutrino emission of gravitationally lensed Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasars with ANTARES data

• Published in: arXiv.org 2014-08
• Main Authors: Albert, A, André, M, Anton, G, Baret, B, Barrios-Martì, J, Basa, S, Bertin, V, Biagi, S, Bogazzi, C, Bormuth, R, Bou-Cabo, M, Bouwhuis, M C, Bruijn, R, Brunner, J, Capone, A, Carr, J, Coniglione, R, Coyle, P, De Rosa, G, Dekeyser, I, DeBonis, G, Dornic, D, Dorosti, Q, Drouhin, D, Dumas, A, Eberl, T, Elsässer, D, Enzenhöfer, A, Escoffier, S, Fehn, K, Felis, I, Folger, F, Fusco, L A, Galatà, S, Gay, P, Geyer, K, Giordano, V, Gleixner, A, Heijboer, A J, Hello, Y, Hernández-Rey, J J, Herold, B, Herrero, A, Hößl, J, Hofestädt, J, Hugon, C, James, C W, Kalekin, O, Kappes, A, Katz, U, Kießling, D, Kreykenbohm, I, Kulikovskiy, V, Lahmann, R, Lambard, G, Lefèvre, D, Leonora, E, Loehner, H, Loucatos, S, Mangano, S, Marcelin, M, Margiotta, A, Martínez-Mora, J A, Martini, S, Michael, T, Migliozzi, P, Müller, C, Neff, M, Nezri, E, Păvălaş, G E, Perrina, C, Popa, V, Pradier, T, Racca, C, Rostovtsev, A, Saldaña, M, Samtleben, D F E, Sánchez-Losa, A, Schmid, J, Schnabel, J, Schulte, S, Schüssler, F, Seitz, T, Sieger, C, Spies, A, Spurio, M, Steijger, J J M, Tayalati, Y, Tselengidou, M, Tönnis, C, Vallage, B, Vallée, C, V Van Elewyck, Visser, E, Vivolo, D, de Wolf, E, Yatkin, K, Zornoza, J D, Zúñiga, J, Falco, E E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Emission; Gravitational effects; Gravitational lenses; Luminosity; Neutrinos; Quasars; Radio; Telescopes
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1407.8525

This paper proposes to exploit gravitational lensing effects to improve the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes to the intrinsic neutrino emission of distant blazar populations. This strategy is illustrated with a search for cosmic neutrinos in the direction of four distant and gravitationally lensed Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasars. The magnification factor is estimated for each system assuming a singular isothermal profile for the lens. Based on data collected from 2007 to 2012 by the ANTARES neutrino telescope, the strongest constraint is obtained from the lensed quasar B0218+357, providing a limit on the total neutrino luminosity of this source of \(1.08\times 10^{46}\,\mathrm{erg}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}\). This limit is about one order of magnitude lower than those previously obtained in the ANTARES standard point source searches with non-lensed Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasars.