Speaker
Description
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are believed to be among the most promising sources of the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray flux. A hadronic component which is accelerated in the high energy environment of an AGN immediately implies the production of high-energy neutrinos. Nevertheless, no clear correlation between AGN and the high-energy cosmic-neutrino flux obtained by IceCube has been found so-far, putting strong limits on the neutrino production at AGN. We discuss a specific type of AGN for which an enhanced neutrino production is expected. This specific sub-set is given by AGN with their high-energy jet directed toward Earth, which is obscured by surrounding dust or gas, defining Dust Obscured Blazars. This type of AGN is predicted to have an enhanced neutrino emission due to the interaction of a possible hadronic component inside the AGN-jet with the surrounding matter. From two different galaxy catalogs, we have selected a sample of nearby sources with the characteristics of Dust Obscured Blazars. This selection is based on observations in the X-ray and radio bands. The data is consequently used to investigate the column density of the surrounding matter, providing an estimate for the neutrino production enhancement due to the nucleon-matter interactions in a beam dump scenario for various dust or gas compositions.
