No Arabic abstract
Mounting evidence suggests that the TeV-PeV neutrino flux detected by the IceCube telescope has mainly an extragalactic origin. If such neutrinos are primarily produced by a single class of astrophysical sources via hadronuclear ($pp$) interactions, a similar flux of gamma-ray photons is expected. For the first time, we employ tomographic constraints to pinpoint the origin of the IceCube neutrino events by analyzing recent measurements of the cross correlation between the distribution of GeV gamma rays, detected by the Fermi satellite, and several galaxy catalogs in different redshift ranges. We find that the corresponding bounds on the neutrino luminosity density are up to one order of magnitude tighter than those obtained by using only the spectrum of the gamma-ray background, especially for sources with mild redshift evolution. In particular, our method excludes any hadronuclear source with a spectrum softer than $E^{-2.1}$ as a main component of the neutrino background, if its evolution is slower than $(1+z)^3$. Starburst galaxies, if able to accelerate and confine cosmic rays efficiently, satisfy both spectral and tomographic constraints.
We explore the joint implications of ultrahigh energy cosmic ray (UHECR) source environments -- constrained by the spectrum and composition of UHECRs -- and the observed high energy astrophysical neutrino spectrum. Acceleration mechanisms producing power-law CR spectra $propto E^{-2}$ are compatible with UHECR data, if CRs at high rigidities are in the quasi-ballistic diffusion regime as they escape their source environment. Both gas- and photon-dominated source environments are able to account for UHECR observations, however photon-dominated sources do so with a higher degree of accuracy. However, gas-dominated sources are in tension with current neutrino constraints. Accurate measurement of the neutrino flux at $sim 10$ PeV will provide crucial information on the viability of gas-dominated sources, as well as whether diffusive shock acceleration is consistent with UHECR observations. We also show that UHECR sources are able to give a good fit to the high energy portion of the astrophysical neutrino spectrum, above $sim$ PeV. This common origin of UHECRs and high energy astrophysical neutrinos is natural if air shower data is interpreted with the textsc{Sibyll2.3c} hadronic interaction model, which gives the best-fit to UHECRs and astrophysical neutrinos in the same part of parameter space, but not for EPOS-LHC.
New bounds on decaying Dark Matter are derived from the gamma-ray measurements of (i) the isotropic residual (extragalactic) background by Fermi and (ii) the Fornax galaxy cluster by H.E.S.S. We find that those from (i) are among the most stringent constraints currently available, for a large range of dark matter masses and a variety of decay modes, excluding half-lives up to about 10^26 to few 10^27 seconds. In particular, they rule out the interpretation in terms of decaying dark matter of the e+/- spectral features in PAMELA, Fermi and H.E.S.S., unless very conservative choices are adopted. We also discuss future prospects for CTA bounds from Fornax which, contrary to the present H.E.S.S. constraints of (ii), may allow for an interesting improvement and may become better than those from the current or future extragalactic Fermi data.
High-energy cosmic neutrinos can reveal new fundamental particles and interactions, probing energy and distance scales far exceeding those accessible in the laboratory. This white paper describes the outstanding particle physics questions that high-energy cosmic neutrinos can address in the coming decade. A companion white paper discusses how the observation of cosmic neutrinos can address open questions in astrophysics. Tests of fundamental physics using high-energy cosmic neutrinos will be enabled by detailed measurements of their energy spectrum, arrival directions, flavor composition, and timing.
We have searched for extremely high energy neutrinos using data taken with the IceCube detector between May 2010 and May 2012. Two neutrino induced particle shower events with energies around 1 PeV were observed, as reported previously. In this work, we investigate whether these events could originate from cosmogenic neutrinos produced in the interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays with ambient photons while propagating through intergalactic space. Exploiting IceCubes large exposure for extremely high energy neutrinos and the lack of observed events above 100 PeV, we can rule out the corresponding models at more than 90% confidence level. The model independent quasi-differential 90% CL upper limit, which amounts to $E^2 phi_{ u_e + u_mu + u_tau} = 1.2 times 10^{-7}$ GeV cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ sr$^{-1}$ at 1 EeV, provides the most stringent constraint in the energy range from 10 PeV to 10 EeV. Our observation disfavors strong cosmological evolution of the highest energy cosmic ray sources such as the Fanaroff-Riley type II class of radio galaxies.
We study the production of cosmogenic neutrinos and photons during the extragalactic propagation of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). For a wide range of models in cosmological evolution of source luminosity, composition and maximum energy we calculate the expected flux of cosmogenic secondaries by normalizing our cosmic ray output to experimental spectra and comparing the diffuse flux of GeV-TeV gamma-rays to the experimental one measured by the Fermi satellite. Most of these models yield significant neutrino fluxes for current experiments like IceCube or Pierre Auger. Furthermore, we discuss the possibilities of signing the presence of UHE proton sources either within or outside the cosmic ray horizon using neutrinos or photons observations even if the cosmic ray composition becomes heavier at the highest energies. We discuss the possible constraints that could be brought on the UHECR origin from the different messengers and energy ranges.