Sensitivity of the KM3NeT/ARCA neutrino telescope to point-like neutrino sources

KM3NeT will be a network of deep-sea neutrino telescopes in the Mediterranean Sea. The KM3NeT/ARCA detector, to be installed at the Capo Passero site (Italy), is optimised for the detection of high-energy neutrinos of cosmic origin. Thanks to its geographical location on the Northern hemisphere, KM3NeT/ARCA can observe upgoing neutrinos from most of the Galactic Plane, including the Galactic Centre. Given its effective area and excellent pointing resolution, KM3NeT/ARCA will measure or significantly constrain the neutrino flux from potential astrophysical neutrino sources. At the same time, it will test flux predictions based on gamma-ray measurements and the assumption that the gamma-ray flux is of hadronic origin. Assuming this scenario, discovery potentials and sensitivities for a selected list of Galactic sources and to generic point sources with an E −2 spectrum are presented. These spectra are assumed to be time independent. The results indicate that an observation with 3 σsignificance is possible in about six years of operation for the most intense sources, such as Supernovae Remnants RX J1713.7-3946 and Vela Jr. If no signal will be found during this time, the fraction of the gamma-ray flux coming from hadronic processes can be constrained to be below 50% for these two objects.The authors acknowledge the financial support of the funding agencies: Agence Nationale de la Recherche (contractANR-15- CE31-0020 ), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) , Commission Européenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) , IdEx program and UnivEarthS Labex programatSorbonneParisCité( ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0 0 05-02 ), France; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) , Germany; The General Secretariat of Research and Technol- ogy (GSRT) , Greece; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) , Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Universitàedella Ricerca(MIUR) , Italy; Ministry of Higher Education , Scientific Research and Professional Training, Morocco; Nederlandse organisatie voor Weten- schappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) , the Netherlands; The National Science Centre , Poland ( 2015/18/E/ST2/00758 ); National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS) , Romania; Plan Estatal de Investigación (refs. FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P , -2-P and -3-P , ( MINECO /FEDER)), Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence program ( MINECO ), Red Consolider MultiDark, (ref. FPA2017-90566-REDC , MINECO ) and Prometeo and Grisolía programs ( Generalitat Valenciana ), Spain