Can astrophysical neutrinos trace the origin of the detected ultra-high energy cosmic rays?

Abstract

Since astrophysical neutrinos are produced in the interactions of cosmic rays, identifying the origin of cosmic rays using directional correlations with neutrinos is one of the most interesting possibilities of the field. For that purpose, especially the Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) are promising, as they are deflected less by extragalactic and Galactic magnetic fields than cosmic rays at lower energies. However, photo-hadronic interactions of the UHECRs limit their horizon, while neutrinos do not interact over cosmological distances. We study the possibility to search for anisotropies by investigating neutrino-UHECR correlations from the theoretical perspective, taking into account the UHECR horizon, magnetic-field deflections, and the cosmological source evolution. Under the assumption that the neutrinos and UHECRs all come from the same source class, we demonstrate that the non-observation of neutrino multiplets strongly constrains the possibility to find neutrino-UHECR correlations.

11 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS; Updated to match version to appear in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Observational evidence for the origin of high-energy neutrinos in parsec-scale nuclei of radio-bright active galaxies
• Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays: The Intersection of the Cosmic and Energy Frontiers
• Constraints on the models of the origin of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos
• Bayesian constraints on the astrophysical neutrino source population from IceCube data
• Search for Spatial Correlations of Neutrinos with Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays
• Extragalactic magnetic field constraints from ultra-high-energy cosmic rays from local galaxies
• Near-future discovery of point sources of ultra-high-energy neutrinos
• Deciphering the Sources of Cosmic Neutrinos
• Observational strategies for ultrahigh-energy neutrinos: the importance of deep sensitivity for detection and astronomy
• Ultra high-energy cosmic rays from beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min horizon