Identifying Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic-Ray Accelerators with Future Ultrahigh-Energy Neutrino Detectors

Abstract

The detection of ultrahigh-energy (UHE) neutrino sources would contribute significantly to solving the decades-old mystery of the origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays. We investigate the ability of a future UHE neutrino detector to identify the brightest neutrino point sources, by exploring the parameter space of the total number of observed events and the angular resolution of the detector. The favored parameter region can be translated to requirements for the effective area, sky coverage and angular resolution of future detectors, for a given source number density and evolution history. Moreover, by studying the typical distance to sources that are expected to emit more than one event for a given diffuse neutrino flux, we find that a significant fraction of the identifiable UHE neutrino sources may be located in the nearby Universe if the source number density is above $\sim 10^{-6}\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-3}$. If sources are powerful and rare enough, as predicted in blazar scenarios, they can first be detected at distant locations. Our result also suggests that if UHE cosmic-ray accelerators are neither beamed nor transients, it will be possible to associate the detected UHE neutrino sources with nearby UHE cosmic-ray and gamma-ray sources, and that they may also be observed using other messengers, including ones with limited horizons such as TeV gamma rays, UHE gamma rays and cosmic rays. We find that for a $\gtrsim 5\sigma$ detection of UHE neutrino sources with a uniform density, $n_s\sim {10}^{-7}-{10}^{-5}{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-3}$, at least $\sim 100-1000$ events and sub-degree angular resolution are needed, and the results depend on the source evolution model.

arXiv comment19 pages, 5 figures, minor revision, accepted for publication in JCAP

References in corpus (68)

• On the normalisation of the cosmic star formation history
• Evidence for High-Energy Extraterrestrial Neutrinos at the IceCube Detector
• Observation of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos in Three Years of IceCube Data
• Letter of Intent for KM3NeT 2.0
• High Energy Neutrinos from Astrophysical Sources: An Upper Bound
• First observation of PeV-energy neutrinos with IceCube
• ANTARES: the first undersea neutrino telescope
• A combined maximum-likelihood analysis of the high-energy astrophysical neutrino flux measured with IceCube
• Neutrinos from propagation of ultra-high energy protons
• Testing the Hadronuclear Origin of PeV Neutrinos Observed with IceCube
• Evidence for Astrophysical Muon Neutrinos from the Northern Sky with IceCube
• Diffuse Neutrino Intensity from the Inner Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei: Impacts of External Photon Fields and the Blazar Sequence
• Atmospheric and Astrophysical Neutrinos above 1 TeV Interacting in IceCube
• The Cosmic Evolution of Fermi BL Lacertae Objects
• Cosmogenic Neutrinos: parameter space and detectabilty from PeV to ZeV
• The Luminosity Function of Fermi-detected Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasars
• Neutral Beams from Blazar Jets
• Blazars as Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic-Ray Sources: Implications for TeV Gamma-Ray Observations
• Constraining High-Energy Cosmic Neutrino Sources: Implications and Prospects
• High-Energy Neutrinos from Photomeson Processes in Blazars
• Methods for point source analysis in high energy neutrino telescopes
• Observational Constraints on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the Second Flight of the ANITA Experiment
• Erratum: Observational Constraints on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the Second Flight of the ANITA Experiment
• Neutrino afterglow from Gamma-Ray Bursts: ~10^{18} eV
• Radio detection of Cosmic-Ray Air Showers and High-Energy Neutrinos
• An improved limit to the diffuse flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• IceCube-Gen2: A Vision for the Future of Neutrino Astronomy in Antarctica
• Performance of two Askaryan Radio Array stations and first results in the search for ultra-high energy neutrinos
• High energy neutrino early afterglows from gamma-ray bursts revisited
• Cosmic Rays Above the Second Knee from Clusters of Galaxies and Associated High-Energy Neutrino Emission
• Pinpointing Extragalactic Neutrino Sources in Light of Recent IceCube Observations
• A simplified view of blazars: the neutrino background
• Probing the birth of fast rotating magnetars through high-energy neutrinos
• Testing the Newborn Pulsar Origin of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays with EeV Neutrinos
• Neutrino, Neutron, and Cosmic Ray Production in the External Shock Model of Gamma Ray Bursts
• Propagation of ultrahigh energy nuclei in clusters of galaxies: resulting composition and secondary emissions
• Minimal Cosmogenic Neutrinos
• Statistics of clustering of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and the number of their sources
• Gamma-Ray and Neutrino Backgrounds as Probes of the High-Energy Universe: Hints of Cascades, General Constraints, and Implications for TeV Searches
• The optical depth of the Universe to ultrahigh energy cosmic ray scattering in the magnetized large scale structure
• Searching for a Correlation Between Cosmic-Ray Sources Above 10^{19} eV and Large-Scale Structure
• Neutrino Background Flux from Sources of Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic-Ray Nuclei
• Cosmogenic neutrinos as a probe of the transition from Galactic to extragalactic cosmic rays
• High-energy neutrinos from astrophysical accelerators of cosmic ray nuclei
• ARIANNA: A New Concept for UHE Neutrino Detection
• The Signature of a Correlation between $>10^{19}\mathrm{eV}$ Cosmic Ray Sources and Large Scale Structure
• Implications of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays for Transient Sources in the Auger Era
• Bounds on the density of sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Long-lived PeV-EeV Neutrinos from GRB Blastwave
• Ultrahigh-Energy Photons as a Probe of Nearby Transient Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic-Ray Sources and Possible Lorentz-Invariance Violation
• Time-dependent neutrino emission from Mrk 421 during flares and predictions for IceCube
• High-Energy Emission Induced by Ultra-High-Energy Photons as a Probe of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic-Ray Accelerators Embedded in the Cosmic Web
• High-energy neutrinos from sources in clusters of galaxies
• The footprint of large scale cosmic structure on the ultra-high energy cosmic ray distribution
• Proton and Neutrino Extragalactic Astronomy
• The first search for extremely-high energy cosmogenic neutrinos with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• On the Origin of High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos
• The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection
• The ExaVolt Antenna: A Large-Aperture, Balloon-embedded Antenna for Ultra-high Energy Particle Detection
• Constraints on Extragalactic Point Source Flux from Diffuse Neutrino Limits
• The Role of Structured Magnetic Fields on Constraining Properties of Transient Sources of Ultra-high-energy Cosmic Rays
• Implications to Sources of Ultra-high-energy Cosmic Rays from their Arrival Distribution
• High Energy Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray Interactions in Clusters of Galaxies
• Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays and Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts, Hypernovae and Galactic Shocks
• Isotropy constraints on powerful sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays at $10^{19}$ eV
• Detection of tau neutrinos by Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes
• A New Method for Finding Point Sources in High-energy Neutrino Data
• Neutrino Telescope Array Letter of Intent: A Large Array of High Resolution Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov and Fluorescence Detectors for Survey of Air-showers from Cosmic Tau Neutrinos in the PeV-EeV Energy Range

Cited by in corpus (15)

• The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Science and Design
• Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays: The Intersection of the Cosmic and Energy Frontiers
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Astrophysics Uniquely Enabled by Observations of High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos
• One-point fluctuation analysis of the high-energy neutrino sky
• A Cross-Correlation Study of High-energy Neutrinos and Tracers of Large-Scale Structure
• Detector Requirements for Model-Independent Measurements of Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Cross Sections
• The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Present and Perspectives
• Prospects of Establishing the Origin of Cosmic Neutrinos using Source Catalogs
• Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays and neutrinos from light nuclei composition
• Near-future discovery of point sources of ultra-high-energy neutrinos
• Radio-detection of neutrino-induced air showers: the influence of topography
• Confronting the dark matter capture rate with a continuous gravitational wave probe of local neutron stars
• Observational strategies for ultrahigh-energy neutrinos: the importance of deep sensitivity for detection and astronomy
• Neutrino anisotropy as a probe of extreme astrophysical accelerators