Beyond first light: Global monitoring for high-energy neutrino astronomy

Abstract

Decades of progress have culminated in first light for high-energy neutrino astronomy: the identification of the first astrophysical sources of TeV-PeV neutrinos by the IceCube neutrino telescope, the active galactic nuclei NGC 1068 and TXS 0506+056. Today, the prospect of going beyond first light to build high-energy neutrino astronomy in earnest by discovering many more neutrino sources is hampered by the relatively low rate of neutrino detection and the limited view of the sky afforded by IceCube, the single cubic-kilometer-scale neutrino telescope in operation. Yet, this will not stand for much longer. Already today, and over the next 10-20 years, the combined observations of new neutrino telescopes, larger and distributed around the world, will have the potential for transformative progress. Together, they will increase the global rate of neutrino detection by up to 30 times and continuously monitor the entire sky. Within a new joint analysis network - the Planetary Neutrino Monitoring network (PLEnuM) - we make detailed forecasts for the discovery of steady-state astrophysical sources of high-energy neutrinos. We show that a combined analysis of global data will expedite source discovery - in some cases, by decades - and enable the detection of fainter sources anywhere in the sky, discovering up to tens of new neutrino sources.