Star-forming galaxies as the origin of the IceCube PeV neutrinos

Abstract

Star-forming galaxies, due to their high star-formation rates and hence large number of supernova remnants therein, are huge reservoirs of cosmic rays (CRs). These CRs collide with gases in the galaxies and produce high-energy neutrinos through $pp$ collisions. In this paper, we calculate the neutrino production efficiency in star-forming galaxies by considering realistic galaxy properties, such as the gas density and galactic wind in star-forming galaxies. To calculate the accumulated neutrino flux, we use the infrared luminosity function of star-forming galaxies obtained by {\em Herschel} PEP/HerMES survey recently. The intensity of CRs producing PeV neutrinos in star-forming galaxies is normalized with the observed CR flux at EeV ({1\,EeV=$10^{18}$eV}), assuming that supernova remnants or hypernova remnants in star-forming galaxies can accelerate protons to EeV energies. Our calculations show that the accumulated neutrino emission produced by CRs in star-forming galaxies can account for the flux and spectrum of the sub-PeV/PeV neutrinos under reasonable assumptions on the CR confinement time in these galaxies.

8 pages, 6 figures, Accepted by ApJ, Minor changes following referee's comments

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• Extragalactic neutrino emission induced by Supermassive and Stellar Mass Black Hole mergers
• Search for GeV and X-ray flares associated with the IceCube track-like neutrinos
• Aspects of astrophysical particle production and beyond the Standard Model phenomenology