Evidence for high-energy neutrinos from the Galactic plane

The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is visible to the eye as a faint band of light in the night sky. This emission from the Galactic plane extends over a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to gamma rays. A fraction of the gamma-ray emission is theorized to arise from cosmic rays interacting with the interstellar medium through the decay of neutral pions. The presence of this diffuse gamma-ray emission implies the existence of Galactic neutrinos produced in associated processes. Recently, strong evidence for the emission of high-energy neutrinos in the Galactic plane was reported by IceCube, a neutrino detector instrumenting a cubic kilometer of glacial ice at the South Pole. This observation, enabled by novel tools based on deep learning, thus opens a new window to study the high-energy universe, allowing us to further probe the properties of our own Galaxy and the origin of cosmic rays.

In this contribution, I will highlight the recent observation by IceCube and the technical advances that made it possible, in addition to providing some future prospects.