Informazioni sull’evento

02/09/2018

Joint Astrophysical Colloquium

The birth of (non-stellar) neutrino Astronomy

Paolo Padovani (European Southern Observatory)

Thursday 25/01/2018 @ 11:30, sala riunioni 4th floor IRA

IceCube has recently reported the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, opening up the PeV (10^15 eV) sky. These observations are challenging to interpret on the astronomical side and have triggered a fruitful collaboration across particle and astro-physics. I will first discuss neutrinos in an astronomical context. I will then make the case for extreme blazars, i.e. strong, very high energy gamma-ray sources of the high energy peaked type, to be the counterparts of at least some of the IceCube neutrinos. This scenario is supported by positional and energetic matches, theoretical modelling, and Monte Carlo simulations and has been confirmed very recently by the detection of gamma-ray emission from an extreme blazar within the error circle of an IceCube event. The talk is self-contained, requires no previous knowledge of neutrinos or blazars, and has been prepared for a very broad audience.