Search for Neutrino Emission from Compton Thick AGN with IceCube

Hadronic interactions within cosmic accelerators are attributed to the production of high-energy neutrinos that simultaneously produce a flux of high-energy gamma rays. However, no evidence of neutrinos from gamma-ray emitting sources have yet been found. Sources opaque to gamma rays are emerging as the most likely source of IceCube neutrinos and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) with obscured nuclei are possible candidates with evidence of neutrino emission from NGC 1068 at the level of 4.2 sigma and hints of emission from NGC 4151. Theoretical models of AGN predict that the gamma-rays undergo further interactions and decay into MeV gamma rays or hard X-rays. This is supported by the observed excess of neutrinos from hard X-ray detected AGN. Compton-thick AGN are highly obscured due to the presence of regions with dense gas, dust and photons that act as targets for interactions and therefore, are potential emitters of neutrinos. We propose a search for high-energy neutrinos from a catalog of Compton-thick AGN detected in hard X-ray regime by NuSTAR using a combined dataset of neutrinos from IceCube.