On the energy of the protons producing the very high-energy astrophysical neutrinos

Abstract

We study the distribution of the energy of the protons that can produce an astrophysical neutrino with a given observed energy, in the TeV--PeV range, both through $pp$ or $p\gamma$ interactions. Due to the increasing multiplicity of the pion production at high center of mass energies, the resulting average proton energies can be much larger than the often used approximate value $E_p\simeq 20E_{\nu }$. Also the threshold of the $p\gamma$ process can lead to a pronounced increase in the values of $⟨E_p⟩/E_{\nu }$ for decreasing neutrino energies. The results depend sensitively on the assumed proton spectrum, since steeper spectra give less weight to the lower energy neutrino tail resulting from the decays of the abundant low-energy pions. In the $p\gamma$ scenarios they also depend sensitively on the spectrum of the target photons. The results are in particular relevant to relate possible characteristics of the neutrino spectrum to those of the corresponding cosmic rays that generated them. We also discuss the associated production of gamma rays at the sources.

References in corpus (22)

• Observation of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos in Three Years of IceCube Data
• Neutrino emission from the direction of the blazar TXS 0506+056 prior to the IceCube-170922A alert
• Energy spectra of gamma-rays, electrons and neutrinos produced at proton-proton interactions in the very high energy regime
• Observation and Characterization of a Cosmic Muon Neutrino Flux from the Northern Hemisphere using six years of IceCube data
• Time-integrated Neutrino Source Searches with 10 years of IceCube Data
• Monte-Carlo simulations of photohadronic processes in astrophysics
• The IceCube high-energy starting event sample: Description and flux characterization with 7.5 years of data
• Testing the Hadronuclear Origin of PeV Neutrinos Observed with IceCube
• Parametrization of gamma-ray production cross-sections for pp interactions in a broad proton energy range from the kinematic threshold to PeV energies
• Parameterization of Gamma, e^+/- and Neutrino Spectra Produced by p-p Interaction in Astronomical Environment
• Photohadronic Neutrinos from Transients in Astrophysical Sources
• Characteristics of the diffuse astrophysical electron and tau neutrino flux with six years of IceCube high energy cascade data
• Flavoring Astrophysical Neutrinos: Flavor Ratios Depend on Energy
• High Energy Neutrino Emission and Neutrino Background from Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Internal Shock Model
• Neutrino afterglow from Gamma-Ray Bursts: ~10^{18} eV
• Simplified models for photohadronic interactions in cosmic accelerators
• Evidence against star-forming galaxies as the dominant source of IceCube neutrinos
• Opening a New Window onto the Universe with IceCube
• Astrophysical Sources of High Energy Neutrinos in the IceCube Era
• High-energy neutrinos from radio galaxies
• How precisely neutrino emission from supernova remnants can be constrained by gamma ray observations?
• PeV neutrinos from the propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Constraints on the models of the origin of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos
• Common envelope jets supernovae with a black hole companion as possible high energy neutrino sources
• Unified thermal model for photohadronic neutrino production in astrophysical sources
• Distinguishing Dirac vs. Majorana Neutrinos: a Cosmological Probe
• Hard X-ray emission from blazars associated with high-energy neutrinos
• Insights from leptohadronic modelling of the brightest blazar flare
• Very-high-energy observations of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 4151 with MAGIC -- Indication of another gamma-ray obscured candidate neutrino source
• On the relation between the astrophysical neutrino fluxes and the cosmic ray fluxes
• Modeling Hadronic Interactions in Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays within Astrophysical Environments: A Parametric Approach