A pilot submillimeter search for IceCube neutrino counterparts: JCMT follow-up and dusty-galaxy catalog associations
Abstract
The submillimeter band offers a complementary route to identifying electromagnetic counterparts of high-energy neutrinos, tracing relativistic transients and persistent dust-obscured galaxies. We present a pilot search combining JCMT/SCUBA-2 follow-up of IceCube events with catalog searches for bright high-redshift dusty systems. Among nine rapidly observed IceCube fields, sources of particular interest were found in three: JCMT0402-0424 ("Shadow Blaster") in IC 210922A, a transient-like source following IC 220115A, and two known blazars in IC 240105A. ALMA resolved the Shadow Blaster into a strongly lensed dusty star-forming galaxy at z=2.988 with a compact gas-rich starburst core. Motivated by this result, we cross-matched IceCube localizations with the Herschel Bright Sources (HerBS) and Planck High-Redshift Source Candidate (PHZ) catalogs. Among 51 historical IceCube events with A_bbox,90 <= pi deg^2, four fields contain at least one HerBS source, compared with 0.723 expected from right-ascension scrambling (fixed-cut p=4.18e-3). Scanning the localization-area threshold gives p_global,A=0.0135. Applying the same IceCube selection to PHZ gives four associated fields versus 3.544 expected (p=0.478). Because the focused HerBS selection followed a broader exploratory analysis with trials-corrected p_global=0.130, the focused result is suggestive rather than definitive. The four well-localized HerBS fields contain six high-redshift DSFGs with apparent L_IR~10^13 L_sun. ALMA imaging and published spectroscopy reveal compact or multiple-component morphologies, extreme molecular-gas kinematics, and possible obscured nuclear activity. These results support a hierarchical strategy: identify luminous submillimeter candidates through wide-field imaging and catalogs, then characterize them at high angular resolution to test for compact gas-rich calorimetric conditions and obscured AGN activity.
Related
- Hidden Neutrino Active Galaxy Candidates: Prospects for Catalog and Stacking Searches with IceCube, IceCube-Gen2, and KM3NeT
- The Chandra-Gaia Catalog of Counterparts: Resolving ambiguous Gaia matches to X-ray sources in the Chandra Source Catalog using Machine Learning
- Neutrino Fingerprints: Image-Based Encodings of IceCube Events for CNN Direction Reconstruction
- Resolving the Galactic Center Region's Gamma-Ray Emission and Searching for its Neutrino Counterpart with HAWC and IceCube
- Limit on high energy neutrino emission from Abell 119 using IceCube 10-year muon track data
BibTeX
@misc{urata2026pilot,
title = {{A pilot submillimeter search for IceCube neutrino counterparts: JCMT follow-up and dusty-galaxy catalog associations}},
author = {Yuji Urata and Kuiyun Huang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.07863},
eprint = {2609.07863},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07863},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A pilot submillimeter search for IceCube neutrino counterparts: JCMT follow-up and dusty-galaxy catalog associations
AU - Yuji Urata
AU - Kuiyun Huang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/07
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.07863
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07863
AB - The submillimeter band offers a complementary route to identifying electromagnetic counterparts of high-energy neutrinos, tracing relativistic transients and persistent dust-obscured galaxies. We present a pilot search combining JCMT/SCUBA-2 follow-up of IceCube events with catalog searches for bright high-redshift dusty systems. Among nine rapidly observed IceCube fields, sources of particular interest were found in three: JCMT0402-0424 ("Shadow Blaster") in IC 210922A, a transient-like source following IC 220115A, and two known blazars in IC 240105A. ALMA resolved the Shadow Blaster into a strongly lensed dusty star-forming galaxy at z=2.988 with a compact gas-rich starburst core. Motivated by this result, we cross-matched IceCube localizations with the Herschel Bright Sources (HerBS) and Planck High-Redshift Source Candidate (PHZ) catalogs. Among 51 historical IceCube events with A_bbox,90 <= pi deg^2, four fields contain at least one HerBS source, compared with 0.723 expected from right-ascension scrambling (fixed-cut p=4.18e-3). Scanning the localization-area threshold gives p_global,A=0.0135. Applying the same IceCube selection to PHZ gives four associated fields versus 3.544 expected (p=0.478). Because the focused HerBS selection followed a broader exploratory analysis with trials-corrected p_global=0.130, the focused result is suggestive rather than definitive. The four well-localized HerBS fields contain six high-redshift DSFGs with apparent L_IR~10^13 L_sun. ALMA imaging and published spectroscopy reveal compact or multiple-component morphologies, extreme molecular-gas kinematics, and possible obscured nuclear activity. These results support a hierarchical strategy: identify luminous submillimeter candidates through wide-field imaging and catalogs, then characterize them at high angular resolution to test for compact gas-rich calorimetric conditions and obscured AGN activity.
ER -