High Energy Neutrino, Photon and Cosmic Ray Fluxes from VHS Cosmic Strings

Abstract

Decaying topological defects, in particular cosmic strings, can produce a significant flux of high energy neutrinos, photons and cosmic rays. According to the prevailing understanding of cosmic string dynamics in an expanding Universe, the network of long strings loses its energy first into string loops, which in turn give off most of their energy as gravitational radiation. However, it has been suggested by Vincent et al. (VHS) that particle emission may be the dominant energy loss channel for the long string network. In this case, the predicted flux of high energy particles would be much larger. Here we calculate the predicted flux of high energy gamma rays, neutrinos and cosmic ray antiprotons and protons as a function of the scale of symmetry breaking at which the strings are produced and as a function of the initial energy m_J of the particle jets which result from the string decay. Assuming the validity of the VHS scenario, we find that due to the interactions with the cosmic radiation backgrounds all fluxes but the neutrino flux are suppressed at the highest energies. This indicates that the observed events above the GZK cutoff can only be accounted for in this scenario if the primary particle is a neutrino and the scale of the symmetry breaking is somewhat less than the GUT scale. The domain of parameter space corresponding to GUT-scale symmetry breaking is excluded also by the current observations below the GZK cutoff. A new aspect of this work is the calculation of the spectrum of the tau neutrinos directly produced in the decay of the X-particles. This significantly increases the tau neutrino signal at high energies in all cosmic string scenarios.

21 pages, 9 figures. Rewritten and updated

References in corpus (17)

• HERWIG 6.5: an event generator for Hadron Emission Reactions With Interfering Gluons (including supersymmetric processes)
• EGRET Observations of the Extragalactic Gamma Ray Emission
• Origin and Propagation of Extremely High Energy Cosmic Rays
• Small-scale anisotropy of cosmic rays above 10^19eV observed with the Akeno Giant Air Shower Array
• Ultra-high energy cosmic rays without GZK cutoff
• Numerical simulations of string networks in the Abelian-Higgs model
• On the detection of Ultra High Energy Neutrinos with the Auger Observatory
• Extremely High Energy Neutrinos, Neutrino Hot Dark Matter, and the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays
• Signatures of Topological Defects
• Probing Grand Unified Theories with Cosmic Ray, Gamma-Ray and Neutrino Astrophysics
• Tau Neutrinos Underground: Signals of ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_{\tau }$ Oscillations with Extragalactic Neutrinos
• Monte Carlo simulation for jet fragmentation in SUSY-QCD
• Limits on Black Hole Formation from Cosmic String Loops
• Radiation from cosmic string standing waves
• High Energy Cosmic Rays from Neutrinos
• TeV and Superheavy Mass-Scale Particles from Supersymmetric Topological Defects, the Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background, and the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays
• High Energy Neutrino Signals of Four Neutrino Mixing

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Cosmic F- and D-strings
• Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• Probing the gravitational wave background from cosmic strings with LISA
• The Gravitational Wave Spectrum from Cosmological B-L Breaking
• Primordial Black Holes: sirens of the early Universe
• Irreducible background of gravitational waves from a cosmic defect network: update and comparison of numerical techniques
• Cosmic Strings from Supersymmetric Flat Directions
• Smooth hybrid inflation in supergravity with a running spectral index and early star formation
• Indirect search for dark matter: prospects for GLAST
• Intermediate Mass Black Hole Seeds from Cosmic String Loops
• Gravitational Wave Emission from a Cosmic String Loop, I: Global Case
• Superconducting cosmic strings as sources of cosmological fast radio bursts
• Cosmic UHE Neutrino Signatures
• Energy and Angular Distribution of Upward UHE Neutrinos and Signals of Low Scale Gravity: Role of Tau Decay
• The Enigma of the Highest Energy Particles of Nature
• Gravitational wave and particle emission from a cosmic string loop: local case
• Signatures of cosmic tau-neutrinos
• On the Possible Enhancement of the Global $21$-cm Signal at Reionization from the Decay of Cosmic String Cusps
• Note on Structure Formation from Cosmic String Wakes
• Dark Matter with Topological Defects in the Inert Doublet Model
• Fast Radio Bursts from the Decay of Cosmic String Cusps
• Polarization Correlations in Pair Production from Charged and Neutral Strings
• Cosmic superstring trajectories in warped compactifications
• Cosmic Microwave Background Spectral Distortions from Cosmic String Loops
• Probing Physics at Extreme Energies with Cosmic Ultra-High Energy Radiation
• Cosmic Rays and Spectral Distortions from Collapsing Textures