Speaker
Mr
Mauricio Bustamante
(Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)
Description
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have long been held as one of the most promising sources of
ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrinos. The internal shock model of GRB emission posits
the joint production of UHE cosmic rays (UHECRs, above 10^8 GeV), photons, and
neutrinos, through photohadronic interactions between source photons and
magnetically-confined energetic protons, that occur when relativistically-expanding
matter shells loaded with baryons collide with one another. While neutrino
observations by IceCube have now ruled out the simplest version of the internal shock
model, in this talk we will show that a revised calculation of the emission, together
with the consideration of the full photohadronic cross section and other particle
physics effects, results in a prediction of the prompt GRB neutrino flux that still
lies one order of magnitude below the current upper bounds, as recently exemplified
by the results from ANTARES. In addition, we will show that by allowing protons to
directly escape their magnetic confinement without interacting at the source, we are
able to partially decouple the cosmic ray and prompt neutrino emission, which grants
the freedom to fit the UHECR observations while respecting the neutrino upper bounds.
Finally, we will briefly present advances towards pinning down the precise relation
between UHECRs and UHE neutrinos, including energy budget considerations, the
required baryonic loading to fit UHECR observations, and the relationship to the
local GRB rate, and we will assess the role that very large volume neutrino
telescopes will play in this.
Primary author
Mr
Mauricio Bustamante
(Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)
Co-authors
Mr
Philipp Baerwald
(Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)
Dr
Walter Winter
(Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)
