In the following, article citations are numbered following their order in the Publications section.
The initial development phase of the MessMapp project has led to several major achievement and progress in the astrophysics field. It has pinpointed a subset of sources, belonging to the blazar population, as highly likely IceCube neutrino emitter [3,4]. The statistical confidence for the association has been corroborated to a higher level in the second phase of the project [Buson in prep.].
The project expanded toward studying the physical properties of this subsample of sources [9,13,14,17]. In parallel, we are continuing our effort in developing pipelines for the analysis of neutrino data [12], and theoretical modelling. A major milestone was reached with the publication of a first study tackling the theoretical angle [11], and the public release of the corresponding numerical modeling code AM3 [10]. In this way, the scientific community can reproduce and test theoretical results from the MessMapp project.
AM3 is a documented open-source software (
https://am3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/(si apre in una nuova finestra)) that solves the coupled integro-differential equations describing the temporal evolution of the spectral densities of particles interacting in astrophysical environments. The software has been extensively used to simulate the multiwavelength and neutrino emission from AGN (including blazars), gamma-ray bursts, and tidal disruption events. The open-source and publicly availability of the AM3 code, developed with support from the ERC project MessMapp, offers an important benefit to the broader astrophysical community. It is the only public code available for conducting leptonic and lepto-hadronic modeling of a variety of astrophysical objects.
Several cutting-edge findings have been published in refereed Journals of the field. These include papers on the multiwavelength properties of the neutrino-emitter blazars, theoretical modeling, and companion papers tackling broader scientific questions. As anticipated in the design of the MessMapp project, the project has deliver a large bulk of high-quality, new astrophysical information in addition to those needed to achieve its aims. These have promoted impactful results in complementary fields [5,7,18,19].
A notable example are publications which expand the research into the gravitational waves field [18,19]. These studies report the largest systematic search of periodic emission in the gamma-ray lightcurves of 350 blazars. Using twelve years of Fermi-LAT data, they pinpointed a sample of 24 blazars displaying evidence of periodic emissions. Blazars display variable emission across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, ranging in time from minutes to years. This variability is generally interpreted as stochastic and unpredictable processes. However, periodic signals could be caused by, e.g. a helical jet or a precessing jet due to the presence of a supermassive black hole binary. Following these works, results may be interpreted in the framework of supermassive black hole binaries. Such binary systems are expected to originate gravitational waves, and therefore are primary targets for current and future generation of gravitational wave detectors (e.g. Pulsar Timing Array, Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, Einstein Telescope).
In addition to efforts by the PI, PostDocs, and PhD students of the team, bachelor's and master's students are regularly contributing to MessMapp studies under the PI's supervision. This not only advances the research but also nurtures the younger generation, inspiring them and providing valuable opportunities to grow both on the personal and scientific level.
