Photohadronic Origin of the TeV-PeV Neutrinos Observed in IceCube

We perform an unbiased search of the origin of the recently observed 28 events above ∼30 TeV in the IceCube neutrino observatory, assuming that these are (apart from the atmospheric background) of astrophysical origin produced by photohadronic interactions. Instead of relying on the normalization of the neutrino flux, we demonstrate that spectral shape and flavor composition can be used to constrain or identify the source class. In order to quantify our observations, we use a model where the target photons are produced by the synchrotron emission of coaccelerated electrons, and we include magnetic field effects on the secondary muons, pions, and kaons. We find that the lack of observed events with energies much larger than PeV points towards sources with strong magnetic fields, which do not exhibit a direct correlation between highest cosmic ray and neutrino energies. While the simplest active galactic nuclei models with efficient proton acceleration plausibly describe the current data at about the 3σ confidence level, we show that IceCube can rule out that the observed neutrinos stem from the sources of the ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays with a factor of 10 increased statistics at more than 5σ if the current observations are confirmed. A possible caveat are sources with strong magnetic fields and high Lorentz factors, such as magnetic energy dominated gamma-ray bursts.

Note:

6 pages, 3 figures. Several clarifications and discussions added. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

95.85.Ry
98.70.Sa
magnetic field: high
neutrino: energy
neutrino: flux
magnetic field: effect
energy: magnetic
atmosphere: background
gamma ray: burst
muon: secondary

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