Neutrino astronomy and gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

The construction of large volume detectors of high energy, >1 TeV, neutrinos is mainly driven by the search for extra-Galactic neutrino sources. The existence of such sources is implied by observations of ultra-high energy, >10^{19} eV, cosmic-rays, the origin of which is a mystery. In this lecture I briefly discuss the expected extra-Galactic neutrino signal and the current state of the experimental efforts. Neutrino emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which are likely sources of both high energy protons and neutrinos, is discussed in some detail. The detection of the predicted GRB neutrino signal, which may become possible in the coming few years, will allow one to identify the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays and to resolve open questions related to the underlying physics of GRB models. Moreover, detection of GRB neutrinos will allow one to test for neutrino properties (e.g. flavor oscillations and coupling to gravity) with an accuracy many orders of magnitude better than is currently possible.

Review, R. Soc. Discussion Meeting on GRBs (To appear in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A)

References in corpus (4)

• High Energy Neutrino Flashes from Far-Ultraviolet and X-ray Flares in Gamma-Ray Bursts
• How astrophysical neutrino sources could be used for early measurements of neutrino mass hierarchy and leptonic CP phase
• X-ray Flares in Early GRB Afterglows
• Very High Energy Neutrinos Originating from Kaons in Gamma-Ray Bursts

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Searches for small-scale anisotropies from neutrino point sources with three years of IceCube data
• A search for low-energy neutrino and antineutrino signals correlated with gamma-ray bursts with Borexino