No Arabic abstract
The TeV/PeV neutrino emission from our Galaxy is related to the distribution of cosmic-ray accelerators, their maximal energy of injection as well as the propagation of injected particles and their interaction with molecular gas. In the last years Interesting upper limits on the diffuse hadronic emission from the whole Galaxy, massive molecular clouds and Fermi Bubbles were set by the IceCube and ANTARES as well as HAWC and Fermi-LAT observations. On the other hand no evidence of Galactic point-like excess has been observed up to now by high-energy neutrino telescopes. This result can be related to the short duration of the PeV hadronic activity of the sources responsible for the acceleration of primary protons, possibly including supernova remnants. All these aspects will be discussed in this work.
We study the propagation of cosmic rays generated by sources residing inside superbubbles. We show that the enhanced magnetic field in the bubble wall leads to an increase of the interior cosmic ray density. Because of the large matter density in the wall, the probability for cosmic ray interactions on gas peaks there. As a result, the walls of superbubbles located near young cosmic ray sources emit efficiently neutrinos. We apply this scenario to the Loop~I and Local Superbubble: These bubbles are sufficiently near such that cosmic rays from a young source as Vela interacting in the bubble wall can generate a substantial fraction of the observed astrophysical high-energy neutrino flux below $sim$ few $times 100$ TeV.
High-energy neutrinos, arising from decays of mesons that were produced through the cosmic rays collisions with air nuclei, form unavoidable background noise in the astrophysical neutrino detection problem. The atmospheric neutrino flux above 1 PeV should be supposedly dominated by the contribution of charmed particle decays. These (prompt) neutrinos originated from decays of massive and shortlived particles, $D^pm$, $D^0$, $bar{D}{}^0$, $D_s^pm$, $Lambda^+_c$, form the most uncertain fraction of the high-energy atmospheric neutrino flux because of poor explored processes of the charm production. Besides, an ambiguity in high-energy behavior of pion and especially kaon production cross sections for nucleon-nucleus collisions may affect essentially the calculated neutrino flux. There is the energy region where above flux uncertainties superimpose. A new calculation presented here reveals sizable differences, up to the factor of 1.8 above 1 TeV, in muon neutrino flux predictions obtained with usage of known hadronic models, SIBYLL 2.1 and QGSJET-II. The atmospheric neutrino flux in the energy range $10-10^7$ GeV was computed within the 1D approach to solve nuclear cascade equations in the atmosphere, which takes into account non-scaling behavior of the inclusive cross-sections for the particle production, the rise of total inelastic hadron-nucleus cross-sections and nonpower-law character of the primary cosmic ray spectrum. This approach was recently tested in the atmospheric muon flux calculations [1]. The results of the neutrino flux calculations are compared with the Frejus, AMANDA-II and IceCube measurement data.
This Astro2020 white paper advocates for a multi-messenger approach that combines high-energy neutrino and broad multi-wavelength electromagnetic observations to study AGN during the coming decade. The unique capabilities of these joint observations promise to solve several long-standing issues in our understanding of AGN as powerful cosmic accelerators.
High-energy neutrinos from decays of mesons, produced in collisions of cosmic ray particles with air nuclei, form unavoidable background for detection of astrophysical neutrinos. More precise calculations of the high-energy neutrino spectrum are required since measurements in the IceCube experiment reach the intriguing energy region where a contribution of the prompt neutrinos and/or astrophysical ones should be discovered. Basing on the referent hadronic models QGSJET II-03, SIBYLL 2.1, we calculate high-energy spectra, both of the muon and electron atmospheric neutrinos, averaged over zenith-angles. The computation is made using three parameterizations of cosmic ray spectra which include the knee region. All calculations are compared with the atmospheric neutrino measurements by Frejus and IceCube. The prompt neutrino flux predictions obtained with thequark-gluon string model (QGSM) for the charm production by Kaidalov & Piskunova do not contradict to the IceCube measurements and upper limit on the astrophysical muon neutrino flux. Neutrino flavor ratio, $phi_{ u_ mu}/phi_{ u_e}$, extracted from IceCube data decreases in the energy range $0.1 - 5$ TeV energy contrary to that one might expect from the conventional neutrino flux. Presumable reasons of such behavior are: i) early arising contribution from decays of charmed particle, differing from predictions of present models, ii) revealed diffuse flux of astrophysical electron neutrinos. The likely diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos related to the PeV neutrino events, detected in the IceCube experiment, leads to a decrease of the flavor ratio at the energy below 10 TeV, that is in qualitative agreement with a rough approximation for theflavor ratio obtained from the IceCube data.
The interaction of cosmic rays with the gas contained in our Galaxy is a guaranteed source of diffuse high energy neutrinos. We provide expectations for this component by considering different assumptions for the cosmic ray distribution in the Galaxy which are intended to cover the large uncertainty in cosmic ray propagation models. We calculate the angular dependence of the diffuse galactic neutrino flux and the corresponding rate of High Energy Starting Events in IceCube by including the effect of detector angular resolution. Moreover we discuss the possibility to discriminate the galactic component from an isotropic astrophysical flux. We show that a statistically significant excess of events from the galactic plane in present IceCube data would favour models in which the cosmic ray density in the inner galactic region is much larger than its local value, thus bringing relevant information on the cosmic ray radial distribution.