On the detectability of BL Lac objects by IceCube

Understand

Since 2010 IceCube observed around 50 high-energy neutrino events of cosmic origin above 60 TeV, but the astrophysical sources of these events are still unknown.

• We recently proposed high-energy emitting BL Lac (HBL) objects as candidate emitters of high-energy neutrinos.
• Assuming a direct proportionality between high-energy gamma-ray and very-high energy neutrino fluxes, we calculated the expected neutrino event number in a year for IceCube and the presently under construction Km3NeT.
• To give a value of the significance of a detection we considered also the background for the single sources.