Neutrino yield from Galactic cosmic rays

Abstract

We calculate the neutrino yield from collisions of cosmic ray (CR) nuclei on gas using the event generator QGSJET-II. We present first the general characteristics and numerical results for the neutrino yield assuming power-law fluxes for the primary CR nuclei. Then we use three parameterisations for the Galactic CR flux to derive the neutrino yield for energies around and above the knee. The shape and the normalization of the resulting neutrino flux above $\sim 10^{14}$ eV depends on the composition of the Galactic CR flux employed, but is generally dominated by its proton component. The spectral shape and magnitude of the neutrino flux suggest that the IceCube excess is not connected to interactions of Galactic sea CRs. If a fraction of these events has a Galactic origin, then they may be caused by CR overdensities around recent close-by Galactic sources.

9 pages; 7 eps figures; v2: Hillas model corrected, contains bonus material compared to the published version

References in corpus (4)

• Discrepant hardening observed in cosmic-ray elemental spectra
• Cosmic Rays from the Knee to the Highest Energies
• Ankle-like Feature in the Energy Spectrum of Light Elements of Cosmic Rays Observed with KASCADE-Grande
• The Gaia inertial reference frame and the tilting of the Milky Way disk

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Testing decay of astrophysical neutrinos with incomplete information
• IceCube events and decaying dark matter: hints and constraints
• Escape model for Galactic cosmic rays and an early extragalactic transition
• Constraints to a Galactic Component of the Ice Cube cosmic neutrino flux from ANTARES
• Fluxes of diffuse gamma rays and neutrinos from cosmic-ray interactions with circumgalactic gas
• Diffuse flux of galactic neutrinos and gamma rays