UHE neutrino astronomy and neutrino oscillations

Abstract

UHE neutrinos with $E>10^{17}$ eV can be produced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) interacting with CMB photons (cosmogenic neutrinos) and by top-down sources, such as topological defects (TD), superheavy dark matter (SHDM) and mirror matter. Cosmogenic neutrinos are reliably predicted and their fluxes can be numerically evaluated using the observed flux of UHECR. The lower limit for the flux is obtained for the case of pure proton composition of the observed UHECR. The rigorous upper limit for cosmogenic neutrino flux also exists. The maximum neutrino energy is determined by maximum energy of acceleration, which at least for the shock acceleration is expected not to exceed $10^{21}-10^{22}$ eV. The top-down sources provide neutrino energies a few orders of magnitude higher, and this can be considered as a signature of these models. Oscillations play important role in UHE neutrino astronomy. At production of cosmogenic neutrinos $\tau$-neutrinos are absent and ${\bar{\nu }}_e$ neutrinos are suppressed. These species, important for detection, appear in the observed fluxes due to oscillation. Mirror neutrinos cannot be observed directly, but due to oscillations to ordinary neutrinos they can provide the largest neutrino flux at the highest energies.

arXiv commentInvited talk at 4th Int. Workshop "Neutrino oscillations in Venice", Apr. 15 - 18, 2008

References in corpus (4)

• First Observation of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin Suppression
• Discovering Ultra High Energy Neutrinos by Horizontal and Upward tau Air-Showers: Evidences in Terrestrial Gamma Flashes?
• Upper limit on the diffuse flux of UHE tau neutrinos from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Ultra High Energy Neutrino Astronomy

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Cosmogenic Neutrinos: parameter space and detectabilty from PeV to ZeV
• Extragalactic propagation of ultrahigh energy cosmic-rays
• Constraints on the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays from cosmogenic neutrinos and photons
• Flavor conversion of cosmic neutrinos from hidden jets
• Origin and evolution of cosmic accelerators - the unique discovery potential of an UHE neutrino telescope: Astronomy Decadal Survey (2010-2020) Science White Paper