[abridged] Hot plasma plays a crucial role in regulating the baryon cycle within the Milky Way, flowing from the energetic sources in the Galactic center and disc, to the corona and the halo. This hot plasma represents an important fraction of the Galactic baryons, plays a key role in galactic outflows and is an important ingredient in galaxy evolution models. Taking advantage of the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG))/eROSITA first all-sky survey (eRASS1), in this work, we aim to provide a panoramic view of the hot circumgalactic medium (CGM) of the Milky Way. Here we present the eROSITA eRASS1 half sky maps in narrow energy bands corresponding to the most prominent soft X-ray lines: OVII and OVIII, which allow us to constrain the distribution of the hot plasma within and surrounding the Milky Way. We corrected the maps by removing the expected contribution associated with the cosmic X-ray background, the time-variable solar wind charge exchange, and the local hot bubble. We applied corrections to mitigate the effect of absorption, therefore highlighting the emission from the CGM of the Milky Way. We use the line ratio of the oxygen lines as a proxy to constrain the temperature of the warm-hot CGM, and we define a pseudo-temperature $\mathcal{T}$ map. The map highlights how different regions are dominated by different thermal components. Towards the outer halo, the temperature distribution of the CGM on angular scales of 2-20 deg is consistent with being constant $\Delta \mathcal{T} / \langle \mathcal{T}\rangle \leq 4\%$, with a marginal detection of $\Delta \mathcal{T} / \langle \mathcal{T}\rangle = 2.7 \% \pm 0.2\%$ (statistical) $\pm 0.6\%$ (systematic) in the southern hemisphere. Instead, significant variations $\sim 12\%$ are observed on many tens of degrees scales when comparing the northern and southern hemispheres.

The increasing volume of gamma-ray data demands new analysis approaches that can handle large-scale datasets while providing robustness for source detection. We present a Deep Learning (DL) based pipeline for detection, localization, and characterization of gamma-ray sources. We extend our AutoSourceID (ASID) method, initially tested with \textit{Fermi}-LAT simulated data and optical data (MeerLICHT), to Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) simulated data. This end-to-end pipeline demonstrates a versatile framework for future application to other surveys and potentially serves as a building block for a foundational model for astrophysical source detection.

The LIGO/Virgo collaboration published the catalogs GWTC-1, GWTC-2.1 and GWTC-3 containing candidate gravitational-wave (GW) events detected during its runs O1, O2 and O3. These GW events can be possible sites of neutrino emission. In this paper, we present a search for neutrino counterparts of 90 GW candidates using IceCube DeepCore, the low-energy infill array of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The search is conducted using an unbinned maximum likelihood method, within a time window of 1000 s and uses the spatial and timing information from the GW events. The neutrinos used for the search have energies ranging from a few GeV to several tens of TeV. We do not find any significant emission of neutrinos, and place upper limits on the flux and the isotropic-equivalent energy emitted in low-energy neutrinos. We also conduct a binomial test to search for source populations potentially contributing to neutrino emission. We report a non-detection of a significant neutrino-source population with this test.

We search for dark matter (DM) annihilating subhalos of the Milky Way halo among the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) unassociated sources. We construct, for the first time, a statistical model of the unassociated sources at latitudes above 10 degrees. The latter is built as a combination of both DM annihilation subhalos as well as Galactic and extragalactic astrophysical components. The astrophysical components are constructed based on distributions of associated sources, while the distribution of DM subhalos is derived from Monte Carlo simulations. In this model we take into account the differences in the distributions of associated and unassociated sources including both covariate and prior probability shifts (both being forms of ``dataset shifts''). Previous searches of DM subhalos were based on classify-and-count strategies, while the approach adopted in this work is based on quantification learning, which allows one to determine a well-defined statistical interpretation of the contribution of a population of DM subhalos to the unassociated Fermi-LAT sources. In the $b\bar{b}$ annihilation channel and for a range of DM masses from 10 GeV to 1 TeV, we don't find a significant contribution from DM subhalos and derive a statistical 95% confidence upper limit on the DM annihilation cross section in this channel. While the derived limits are consistent with previous classify-and-count approaches, our generative statistical model opens new avenues for population studies of Fermi-LAT sources and, more generally, for searches of anomalies on top of backgrounds in presence of statistical and systematic uncertainties.

In this paper, we present a new algorithm, MiniFool, that implements physics-inspired adversarial attacks for testing neural network-based classification tasks in particle and astroparticle physics. While we initially developed the algorithm for the search for astrophysical tau neutrinos with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, we apply it to further data from other science domains, thus demonstrating its general applicability. Here, we apply the algorithm to the well-known MNIST data set and furthermore, to Open Data data from the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The algorithm is based on minimizing a cost function that combines a $\chi^2$ based test-statistic with the deviation from the desired target score. The test statistic quantifies the probability of the perturbations applied to the data based on the experimental uncertainties. For our studied use cases, we find that the likelihood of a flipped classification differs for both the initially correctly and incorrectly classified events. When testing changes of the classifications as a function of an attack parameter that scales the experimental uncertainties, the robustness of the network decision can be quantified. Furthermore, this allows testing the robustness of the classification of unlabeled experimental data.

Excess of gamma rays around the Galactic center (GC) observed in the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data is one of the most intriguing features in the gamma-ray sky. The spherical morphology and the spectral energy distribution with a peak around a few GeV are consistent with emission from annihilation of dark matter particles. Other possible explanations include a distribution of millisecond pulsars (MSPs). One of the caveats of the MSP hypothesis is the relatively small number of associated MSPs near the GC. In this paper, we perform a multiclass classification of Fermi-LAT sources using machine learning and determine the contribution from unassociated MSP-like sources near the GC. The spectral energy distribution, spatial morphology, and the source count distribution are consistent with expectations for a population of MSPs that can explain the gamma-ray excess. Possible caveats of the contribution from the unassociated MSP-like sources are discussed.

We present the first X-ray reflection model for testing the assumption that the metric of astrophysical black holes is described by the Kerr solution. We employ the formalism of the transfer function proposed by Cunningham. The calculations of the reflection spectrum of a thin accretion disk are split into two parts: the calculation of the transfer function and the calculation of the local spectrum at any emission point in the disk. The transfer function only depends on the background metric and takes into account all the relativistic effects (gravitational redshift, Doppler boosting, and light bending). Our code computes the transfer function for a spacetime described by the Johannsen metric and can easily be extended to any stationary, axisymmetric, and asymptotically flat spacetime. Transfer functions and single line shapes in the Kerr metric are compared with those calculated from existing codes to check that we reach the necessary accuracy. We also simulate some observations with NuSTAR and LAD/eXTP and fit the data with our new model to show the potential capabilities of current and future observations to constrain possible deviations from the Kerr metric.

Muons produced in atmospheric cosmic ray showers account for the by far dominant part of the event yield in large-volume underground particle detectors. The IceCube detector, with an instrumented volume of about a cubic kilometer, has the potential to conduct unique investigations on atmospheric muons by exploiting the large collection area and the possibility to track particles over a long distance. Through detailed reconstruction of energy deposition along the tracks, the characteristics of muon bundles can be quantified, and individual particles of exceptionally high energy identified. The data can then be used to constrain the cosmic ray primary flux and the contribution to atmospheric lepton fluxes from prompt decays of short-lived hadrons. In this paper, techniques for the extraction of physical measurements from atmospheric muon events are described and first results are presented. The multiplicity spectrum of TeV muons in cosmic ray air showers for primaries in the energy range from the knee to the ankle is derived and found to be consistent with recent results from surface detectors. The single muon energy spectrum is determined up to PeV energies and shows a clear indication for the emergence of a distinct spectral component from prompt decays of short-lived hadrons. The magnitude of the prompt flux, which should include a substantial contribution from light vector meson di-muon decays, is consistent with current theoretical predictions.

We present the first Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) low energy catalog (1FLE) of sources detected in the energy range 30 - 100 MeV. The COMPTEL telescope detected sources below 30 MeV, while catalogs released by the Fermi-LAT and EGRET collaborations use energies above 100 MeV. We create a list of sources detected in the energy range between 30 and 100 MeV, which closes a gap of point source analysis between the COMPTEL catalog and the Fermi-LAT catalogs. One of the main challenges in the analysis of point sources is the construction of the background diffuse emission model. In our analysis, we use a background-independent method to search for point-like sources based on a wavelet transform implemented in the PGWave code. The 1FLE contains 198 sources detected above 3 $\sigma$ significance with eight years and nine months of the Fermi-LAT data. For 187 sources in the 1FLE catalog we have found an association in the Fermi-LAT 3FGL catalog: 148 are extragalactic, 22 are Galactic, and 17 are unclassified in the 3FGL. The ratio of the number of flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQ) to BL Lacertae (BL Lacs) in 1FLE is 3 to 1, which can be compared with an approximately 1 to 1 ratio for the 3FGL or a 1 to 6 ratio for 3FHL. The higher ratio of the FSRQs in the 1FLE is expected due to generally softer spectra of FSRQs relative to BL Lacs. Most BL Lacs in 1FLE are of low-synchrotron peaked blazar type (18 out of 31), which have softer spectra and higher redshifts than BL Lacs on average. Correspondingly, we find that the average redshift of the BL Lacs in 1FLE is higher than in 3FGL or 3FHL. There are 11 sources that do not have associations in the 3FGL. Most of the unassociated sources either come from regions of bright diffuse emission or have several known 3FGL sources in the vicinity, which can lead to source confusion. The remaining unassociated sources have significance less than 4 $\sigma$.

Neural-network based predictions of event properties in astro-particle physics are getting more and more common. However, in many cases the result is just utilized as a point prediction. Statistical uncertainties, coverage, systematic uncertainties or a goodness-of-fit measure are often not calculated. Here we describe a certain choice of training and network architecture that allows to incorporate all these properties into a single network model. We show that a KL-divergence objective of the joint distribution of data and labels allows to unify supervised learning and variational autoencoders (VAEs) under one umbrella of stochastic variational inference. The unification motivates an extended supervised learning scheme which allows to calculate a goodness-of-fit p-value for the neural network model. Conditional normalizing flows amortized with a neural network are crucial in this construction. We discuss how to calculate coverage probabilities without numerical integration for specific "base-ordered" contours that are unique to normalizing flows. Furthermore we show how systematic uncertainties can be included via effective marginalization during training. The proposed extended supervised training incorporates (1) coverage calculation, (2) systematics and (3) a goodness-of-fit measure in a single machine-learning model. There are in principle no constraints on the shape of the involved distributions, in fact the machinery works with complex multi-modal distributions defined on product spaces like $\mathbb{R}^n \times \mathbb{S}^m$. The coverage calculation, however, requires care in its interpretation when the distributions are too degenerate. We see great potential for exploiting this per-event information in event selections or for fast astronomical alerts which require uncertainty guarantees.

In the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a signal of astrophysical neutrinos is obscured by backgrounds from atmospheric neutrinos and muons produced in cosmic-ray interactions. IceCube event selections used to isolate the astrophysical neutrino signal often focus on t/he morphology of the light patterns recorded by the detector. The analyses presented here use the new IceCube Enhanced Starting Track Event Selection (ESTES), which identifies events likely generated by muon neutrino interactions within the detector geometry, focusing on neutrino energies of 1-500 TeV with a median angular resolution of 1.4°. Selecting for starting track events filters out not only the atmospheric-muon background, but also the atmospheric-neutrino background in the southern sky. This improves IceCube's muon neutrino sensitivity to southern-sky neutrino sources, especially for Galactic sources that are not expected to produce a substantial flux of neutrinos above 100 TeV. In this work, the ESTES sample was applied for the first time to searches for astrophysical sources of neutrinos, including a search for diffuse neutrino emission from the Galactic plane. No significant excesses were identified from any of the analyses; however, constraining limits are set on the hadronic emission from TeV gamma-ray Galactic plane objects and models of the diffuse Galactic plane neutrino flux.

The reflection spectrum produced by a cold medium illuminated by X-ray photons is not isotropic and its shape depends on the emission angle. In the reflection spectrum of an accretion disk of a black hole, the value of the emission angle changes over the disk and, in general, is different from the value of the inclination angle of the disk because of the light bending in the strong gravitational field of the black hole. Current reflection models make some approximations, as calculating a reflection spectrum taking the correct emission angle at every point of the disk into account would be too time-consuming and make the model too slow to analyze observations. In a recent paper, we showed that these approximations are unsuitable to fit high-quality black hole spectra expected from the next generation of X-ray missions. Here, we present a reflection model with improved calculations of the emission angle that solves this problem.

Pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) are prominent sources in the very-high energy (VHE) gamma-ray sky, constituting the most numerous identified source class in the H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey (HGPS). They are comprised of energetic particles originating from the pulsar and expanding into the surrounding medium. As such, PWNe are of very high scientific interest as PeVatron candidates, objects that could potentially accelerate particles up to PeV energies. Additionally other aspects of their acceleration mechanism are being actively investigated, such as the open question of whether they accelerate not only leptonic but also hadronic particles, and the details of their morphology and particle transport mechanism. As PWNe emit photons over a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, multiwavelength (MWL) studies are crucial for the investigation and study of their emission. In this vein we present a joint eROSITA X-ray and H.E.S.S. gamma-ray study of the PWN MSH 15-52. We showcase our custom code for integrating the EDR and DR1 eROSITA data into the Gammapy framework, a python package optimised for the analysis of gamma-ray data. We present the first 3D (spatial and spectral) fit to eROSITA data by using Gammapy. We furthermore combine these data with the public H.E.S.S. gamma-ray observations of MSH 15-52, resulting in a joint physical fit of the underlying particle population, and a subsequent discussion of the physical implications of our results. Finally we give an outlook towards future efforts in MWL studies of PWNe and the broader context of MWL data analysis with Gammapy.

We provide supporting details for the search for a 3+1 sterile neutrino using data collected over eleven years at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The analysis uses atmospheric muon-flavored neutrinos from 0.5 to 100\, TeV that traverse the Earth to reach the IceCube detector, and finds a best-fit point at $\sin^2(2\theta_{24}) = 0.16$ and $\Delta m^{2}_{41} = 3.5$ eV$^2$ with a goodness-of-fit p-value of 12\% and consistency with the null hypothesis of no oscillations to sterile neutrinos with a p-value of 3.1\%. Several improvements were made over past analyses, which are reviewed in this article, including upgrades to the reconstruction and the study of sources of systematic uncertainty. We provide details of the fit quality and discuss stability tests that split the data for separate samples, comparing results. We find that the fits are consistent between split data sets.

The accretion of matter onto black holes and neutron stars often leads to the launching of outflows that can greatly affect the environments surrounding the compact object. In supermassive black holes, these outflows can even be powerful enough to dictate the evolution of the entire host galaxy, and yet, to date, we do not understand how these so-called accretion disk winds are launched - whether by radiation pressure, magnetic forces, thermal irradiation, or a combination thereof. An important means of studying disk winds produced near the central compact object is through X-ray absorption line spectroscopy, which allows us to probe outflow properties along a single line of sight, but usually provides little information about the global 3D disk wind structure that is vital for understanding the launching mechanism and total wind energy budget. Here, we study Hercules X-1, a unique, nearly edge-on X-ray binary with a warped accretion disk precessing with a period of about 35 days. This disk precession results in changing sightlines towards the neutron star, through the ionized outflow. We perform time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy over the precession phase and detect a strong decrease in the wind column density by three orders of magnitude as our sightline progressively samples the wind at greater heights above the accretion disk. The wind becomes clumpier as it rises upwards and expands away from the neutron star. Modelling the warped disk shape, we create a 2D map of wind properties. This unique measurement of the vertical structure of an accretion disk wind allows direct comparisons to 3D global simulations to reveal the outflow launching mechanism.

We study reflected X-ray emission that returns to the accretion disc in the strong gravitational fields around black holes using General Relativistic ray tracing and radiative transfer calculations. Reflected X-rays that are produced when the inner regions of the disc are illuminated by the corona are subject to strong gravitational light bending, causing up to 47 per cent of the reflected emission to be returned to the disc around a rapidly spinning black hole, depending upon the scale height of the corona. The iron K line is enhanced relative to the continuum by 25 per cent, and the Compton hump by up to a factor of three. Additional light travel time between primary and secondary reflections increases the reverberation time lag measured in the iron K band by 49 per cent, while the soft X-ray lag is increased by 25 per cent and the Compton hump response time is increased by 60 per cent. Measured samples of X-ray reverberation lags are shown to be consistent with X-rays returning to the accretion disc in strong gravity. Understanding the effects of returning radiation is important in interpreting reverberation observations to probe black holes. Reflected X-rays returning to the disc can be uniquely identified by blueshifted returning iron K line photons that are Compton scattered from the inner disc, producing excess, delayed emission in the 3.5-4.5keV energy range that will be detectable with forthcoming X-ray observatories, representing a unique test of General Relativity in the strong field limit.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has observed a diffuse flux of TeV-PeV astrophysical neutrinos at 5.7{\sigma} significance from an all-flavor search. The direct detection of tau neutrinos in this flux has yet to occur. Tau neutrinos become distinguishable from other flavors in IceCube at energies above a few hundred TeV, when the cascade from the tau neutrino charged current interaction becomes resolvable from the cascade from the tau lepton decay. This paper presents results from a dedicated search for tau neutrinos with energies between 214 TeV and 72 PeV. The analysis searches for IceCube optical sensors that observe two separate pulses in a single event - one from the tau neutrino interaction, and a second from the tau decay. This is the first IceCube tau neutrino search to be more sensitive to tau neutrinos than to any other neutrino flavor. No candidate events were observed in three years of IceCube data. For the first time, a differential upper limit on astrophysical tau neutrinos is derived around the PeV energy region, which is nearly three orders of magnitude lower in energy than previous limits from dedicated tau neutrino searches.

The Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has collected the largest ever sample of high-energy cosmic-ray electron and positron events since the beginning of its operation. Potential anisotropies in the arrival directions of cosmic-ray electrons or positrons could be a signature of the presence of nearby sources. We use almost seven years of data with energies above 42 GeV processed with the Pass~8 reconstruction. The present data sample can probe dipole anisotropies down to a level of $10^{-3}$. We take into account systematic effects that could mimic true anisotropies at this level. We present a detailed study of the event selection optimization of the cosmic-ray electrons and positrons to be used for anisotropy searches. Since no significant anisotropies have been detected on any angular scale, we present upper limits on the dipole anisotropy. The present constraints are among the strongest to date probing the presence of nearby young and middle-aged sources.

The Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) monitoring program TANAMI provides bi-monthly, dualfrequency (8GHz and 22GHz) observations of extragalactic jets with milliarcsecond resolution south of -30 deg declination using the Australian Long Baseline Array (LBA) and additional radio telescopes in Antarctica, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa. Supporting programs provide multiwavelength coverage of the Fermi/LAT sources of the TANAMI sample, in order to construct simultaneous broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs), as well as rapid follow-ups of high energy flares. The main purpose of this project is to study the radio-gamma-ray connection seen in the jets of active galactic nuclei (AGN) via simultaneous monitoring of their VLBI structure and broadband emission in order to distinguish between different proposed emission models. Here we give a brief description of the TANAMI program and will then focus on its current status: (1) We present some results on the first simultaneous dual-frequency images of the whole sample resulting in spectral index maps of the parsec-scale core-jet structure. (2) The TANAMI array allows us to observe the closest radio galaxy Centaurus A with unprecedented high angular resolution resulting in the best-ever image of an AGN jet. We constructed the best resolved spectral index map of its jet-counterjet system revealing multiple possible production sites of gamma-rays recently detected by Fermi/LAT. With the first epochs of the TANAMI monitoring, we can study the proper jet motion of individual jet components of Cen A on sub-parsec scales. (3) Since the launch of Fermi/LAT we added newly detected gamma-ray bright AGN to the TANAMI observing list which is built as a combined radio and gamma-ray selected sample. For most of these sources the TANAMI observations obtain the first VLBI images ever made.

We analyze the two brightest Chandra X-ray flares detected from Sagittarius A*, with peak luminosities more than 600 x and 245 x greater than the quiescent X-ray emission. The brightest flare has a distinctive double-peaked morphology --- it lasts 5.7 ksec ($\sim 2$ hours), with a rapid rise time of 1500 sec and a decay time of 2500 sec. The second flare lasts 3.4 ksec, with rise and decay times of 1700 sec and 1400 sec. These luminous flares are significantly harder than quiescence: the first has a power law spectral index $\Gamma = 2.06\pm 0.14$ and the second has $\Gamma = 2.03\pm 0.27$, compared to $\Gamma = 3.0\pm0.2$ for the quiescent accretion flow. These spectral indices (as well as the flare hardness ratios) are consistent with previously-detected Sgr A* flares, suggesting that bright and faint flares arise from similar physical processes. Leveraging the brightest flare's long duration and high signal-to-noise, we search for intraflare variability and detect excess X-ray power at a frequency of $\nu \approx 3$ mHz, but show that it is an instrumental artifact and not of astrophysical origin. We find no other evidence (at the 95% confidence level) for periodic or quasi-periodic variability in either flares' time series. We also search for non-periodic excess power but do not find compelling evidence in the power spectrum. Bright flares like these remain our most promising avenue for identifying Sgr A*'s short timescale variability in the X-ray, which may probe the characteristic size scale for the X-ray emission region.