Probing the statistical correlation of optical tidal disruption events with high-energy neutrinos

¹ Institute of Astrophysics, FORTH, N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, 70013 Heraklion, Greece
² Department of Physics, University of Crete, 71003 Heraklion, Greece
³ Institutt for Fysikk, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskloreringen 5 Trondheim 7491, Norway
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, 20014 University of Turku, Finland
⁵ Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), Quantum, University of Turku, Vesilinnantie 5, 20014 Turku, Finland
⁶ Aalto University Metsähovi Radio Observatory, Metsähovintie 114, FI-02540 Kylmälä, Finland

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Received: 20 July 2025
Accepted: 23 February 2026

Abstract

High-energy (HE) neutrinos have been observed by the IceCube (IC) Neutrino Observatory for over a decade. Nevertheless, the astrophysical origin and the responsible mechanisms producing these HE neutrinos are still a mystery, with many astrophysical phenomena as potential emitters. A plethora of previous studies have attempted to study the correlation between HE neutrinos and active galactic nuclei, finding inconclusive results. Tidal disruption events (TDEs) have been proposed as candidate HE neutrino emitters, yet there is only one prior statistical study for the correlation of the two due to the limited number of observed TDEs. For this reason we used TDECat, an optical TDE repository, to investigate the potential association of TDEs with IceCube HE neutrino events. We implemented a spatio-temporal algorithm, where the temporal constraint is based on the transient nature of TDEs. We also simulated two sets of TDEs, correlated differently with neutrinos, to further study their statistical correlation. Despite the individual cases of TDE AT2019dsg and AT2021lo, we find no statistical association between optical TDEs and HE neutrinos. We find jetted TDE Sw J2058+05 to be spatio-temporally associated with a neutrino event. However, a γ-ray-flaring, flat-spectrum radio quasar is also within the neutrino’s sky error region. Although our findings indicate no statistical correlation between optical TDEs and HE neutrinos, this correlation should be further studied in the future. Upcoming surveys such as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, coupled with next-generation neutrino observatories, such as KM3NET and IceCube-Gen2, will expand both TDE and HE neutrino populations, clarifying their potential correlation.