Speaker
Description
We present a method to search for coincident gravitational-wave and high-energy neutrino emissions from binary black holes (BBHs) embedded in the accretion disks of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Such environments are promising sites for multimessenger emission from BBHs, as the surrounding matter and radiation fields can enable electromagnetic and neutrino emission in addition to GWs. Moreover, interactions between BBHs and AGN disks may facilitate binary formation and hierarchical mergers, potentially contributing to the population of black holes in the mass gap detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaborations.
Our search method combines GW and neutrino data with AGN optical catalogs to enhance sensitivity to potential sources. We assess the sensitivity of the search using subthreshold GW candidates detected by LVK, neutrino candidates from public IceCube data and AGN candidates from the Quaia catalog.
A confident detection would constitute the first evidence for an association between GW and high-energy neutrinos and provide crucial insights into BBH formation channels.