Neutrino decays over cosmological distances and the implications for neutrino telescopes

Baerwald, Philipp; Bustamante, Mauricio; Winter, Walter

doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2012/10/020

Cited by 133 publications

(151 citation statements)

References 105 publications

(174 reference statements)

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“…Neither flavor ratio analysis included a dedicated tau neutrino identification algorithm, which would improve the measurement of astrophysical neutrino flavor ratios. Precise measurement of astrophysical neutrino flavor content at Earth will shed light on the emission mechanisms at the source, test the fundamental properties of neutrinos over extremely long baselines and better constrain new physics models which predict significant deviations from equal fractions of all flavors [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search for astrophysical tau neutrinos in three years of IceCube data

2016

Phys. Rev. D

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The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has observed a diffuse flux of TeV-PeVastrophysical neutrinos at 5.7σ significance from an all-flavor search. The direct detection of tau neutrinos in this flux has yet to occur. Tau neutrinos become distinguishable from other flavors in IceCube at energies above a few hundred TeV, when the cascade from the tau neutrino charged current interaction becomes resolvable from the cascade from the (2016) 022001-2 tau lepton decay. This paper presents results from the first dedicated search for tau neutrinos with energies between 214 TeV and 72 PeV in the full IceCube detector. The analysis searches for IceCube optical sensors that observe two separate pulses in a single event-one from the tau neutrino interaction and a second from the tau decay. No candidate events were observed in three years of IceCube data. For the first time, a differential upper limit on astrophysical tau neutrinos is derived around the PeV energy region, which is nearly 3 orders of magnitude lower in energy than previous limits from dedicated tau neutrino searches.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search for astrophysical tau neutrinos in three years of IceCube data

2016

Phys. Rev. D

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“…In typical models (Waxman & Bahcall 1997;Guetta et al 2004;Becker et al 2006;Abbasi et al 2010), this ratio is usually assumed to be 10, while theoretical considerations suggest a value of 100 (Schlickeiser 2002) if GRBs are to be the sources of the UHECRs. In a recent study (Baerwald et al 2014), this value is self-consistently derived from the combined UHECR source and propagation model, including the fit of the UHECR data. For an injection index of two, it has been demonstrated that this value depends on the burst parameters, and that values between 10 and 100 are plausible 1 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of secondary acceleration on the neutrino spectra in gamma-ray bursts

Winter¹,

Tjus

Klein

2014

A&A

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Context. The observation of charged cosmic rays with energies up to 10 20 eV shows that particle acceleration must occur in astrophysical sources. Acceleration of secondary particles like muons and pions, produced in cosmic ray interactions, are usually neglected, however, when calculating the flux of neutrinos from cosmic ray interactions. Aims. Here, we discuss the acceleration of secondary muons, pions, and kaons in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) within the internal shock scenario, and their impact on the neutrino fluxes. Methods. We introduce a two-zone model consisting of an acceleration zone (the shocks) and a radiation zone (the plasma downstream the shocks). The acceleration in the shocks, which is an unavoidable consequence of efficient proton acceleration, requires efficient transport from the radiation back to the acceleration zone. On the other hand, stochastic acceleration in the radiation zone can enhance the secondary spectra of muons and kaons significantly if there is a sufficiently large turbulent region. Results. Overall, it is plausible that neutrino spectra can be enhanced by up to a factor of two at the peak by stochastic acceleration, that an additional spectral peak appears from shock acceleration of the secondary muons and pions, and that the neutrino production from kaon decays is enhanced. Conclusions. Depending on the GRB parameters, the general conclusions concerning the limits to the internal shock scenario obtained by recent IceCube and ANTARES analyses may be affected by up to a factor of two by secondary acceleration. Most of the changes occur at energies above 10 7 GeV, so the effects for next-generation radio-detection experiments will be more pronounced. In the future, however, if GRBs are detected as high-energy neutrino sources, the detection of one or several pronounced peaks around 10 6 GeV or higher energies could help to derive the basic properties of the magnetic field strength in the GRB.

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“…In Figure 2[d] due to muon cooling R increases to 0.54 near 2 EeV and then it attains the highest value of 0.57 at 10 EeV due to the kaon decay channels. In Figure 3 [23]. At the highest energy our R values of 0.57 are 12% lower than the constant value of 0.64 in Baerwald et al [23].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 53%

Neutrinos from decaying muons, pions, neutrons and kaons in gamma ray bursts

Moharana¹,

Gupta²

2012

Astroparticle Physics

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In the internal shock model of gamma ray bursts ultrahigh energy muons, pions, neutrons and kaons are likely to be produced in the interactions of shock accelerated relativistic protons with low energy photons (KeV-MeV). These particles subsequently decay to high energy neutrinos/antineutrinos and other secondaries. In the high internal magnetic fields of gamma ray bursts, the ultrahigh energy charged particles (µ + , π + , K + ) lose energy significantly due to synchrotron radiations before decaying into secondary high energy neutrinos and antineutrinos. The relativistic neutrons decay to high energy antineutrinos, protons and electrons. We have calculated the total neutrino flux (neutrino and antineutrino) considering the decay channels of ultrahigh energy muons, pions, neutrons and kaons. We have shown that the total neutrino flux generated in neutron decay can be higher than that produced in µ + and π + decay. The charged kaons being heavier than pions, lose energy slowly and their secondary total neutrino flux is more than that from muons and pions at very high energy. Our detailed calculations on secondary particle production in pγ interactions give the total neutrino fluxes and their flavour ratios expected on earth. Depending on the values of the parameters (luminosity, Lorentz factor, variability time, spectral indices and break energy in the photon spectrum) of a gamma ray burst the contributions to the total neutrino flux from the decay of different particles (muon, pion, neutron and kaon) may vary and they would also be reflected on the neutrino flavour ratios.

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Neutrino decays over cosmological distances and the implications for neutrino telescopes

Cited by 133 publications

References 105 publications

Search for astrophysical tau neutrinos in three years of IceCube data

Search for astrophysical tau neutrinos in three years of IceCube data

Impact of secondary acceleration on the neutrino spectra in gamma-ray bursts

Neutrinos from decaying muons, pions, neutrons and kaons in gamma ray bursts

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