Neutron β-decay as the origin of IceCube's PeV (anti)neutrinos

Abstract

Motivated by the indications of a possible deficit of muon tracks in the first three-year equivalent dataset of IceCube we investigate the possibility that the astrophysical (anti)neutrino flux (in the PeV energy range) could originate from β-decay of relativistic neutrons. We show that to accommodate IceCube observations it is necessary that only about 1% to 10% of the emitted cosmic rays in the energy decade 10^{8.5} \alt E_{CR}/GeV \alt 10^{9.5}$, yielding antineutrinos on Earth (10^{5.5} \alt E_{\bar ν}/GeV \alt 10^{6.5}), are observed. Such a strong suppression can be explained assuming magnetic shielding of the secondary protons which diffuse in extragalactic magnetic fields of strength 10 \alt B/nG \alt 100 and coherence length \alt Mpc.

To be published in PRD

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Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Visible Decay of Astrophysical Neutrinos at IceCube
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• The Leptoquark Implication from the CMS and IceCube Experiments
• ANTARES Constrains a Blazar Origin of Two IceCube PeV Neutrino Events
• Pseudo-Dirac Neutrinos and Relic Neutrino Matter Effect on the High-energy Neutrino Flavor Composition
• The Flavour Composition of the High-Energy IceCube Neutrinos
• Flavor Matters, but Matter Flavors: Matter Effects on Flavor Composition of Astrophysical Neutrinos