The Galactic Neutrino Sky: Predictions from Gamma-ray Source Populations

Abstract

High-energy neutrino emission from the Galactic plane has been detected at a significance of $5.7σ$, with a prominent excess toward the inner Galaxy. We show that this excess can be naturally explained by the spatial distribution of Galactic neutrino sources. By combining $γ$-ray source catalogs spanning GeV-PeV energies and selecting candidate hadronic emitters, we construct ReGal-$γ$, a template of resolved Galactic $γ$-ray sources that may also produce high-energy neutrinos. Compared with models of Galactic diffuse emission, ReGal-$γ$ predicts a neutrino intensity that is more strongly concentrated toward the inner Galaxy. Combined with models of diffuse cosmic-ray emission and unresolved $γ$-ray sources, the template reproduces both the spectral energy distribution and the Galactic longitudinal count profile reported by IceCube without requiring additional renormalization of the emission models. We test this result using an independent $γ$-ray source template constructed from different catalogs and find that our conclusion is robust against uncertainties in source modeling. Future measurements of the energy-dependent longitudinal and latitudinal neutrino distributions will provide tighter constraints on these models and help determine the spatial distribution of Galactic neutrino sources.