Diffuse Boosted Cosmic Neutrino Background

Abstract

Energetic cosmic rays scatter off the cosmic neutrino background throughout the history of the Universe, yielding a diffuse flux of cosmic relic neutrinos boosted to high energies. We calculate this flux under different assumptions of the cosmic-ray flux spectral slope and redshift evolution. The non-observation of the diffuse flux of boosted relic neutrinos with current high-energy neutrino experiments already excludes an average cosmic neutrino background overdensity larger than $\sim 10^4$ over cosmological distances. We discuss the future detectability of the diffuse flux of boosted relic neutrinos in light of neutrino overdensity estimates and cosmogenic neutrino backgrounds.

Matches published version in PRD