Hidden Cosmic-Ray Accelerators as an Origin of TeV-PeV Cosmic Neutrinos

Kohta Murase, Dafne Guetta, Markus Ahlers

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

278 Scopus citations

Abstract

The latest IceCube data suggest that the all-flavor cosmic neutrino flux may be as large as 10-7 GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1 around 30 TeV. We show that, if sources of the TeV-PeV neutrinos are transparent to γ rays with respect to two-photon annihilation, strong tensions with the isotropic diffuse γ-ray background measured by Fermi are unavoidable, independently of the production mechanism. We further show that, if the IceCube neutrinos have a photohadronic (pγ) origin, the sources are expected to be opaque to 1-100 GeV γ rays. With these general multimessenger arguments, we find that the latest data suggest a population of cosmic-ray accelerators hidden in GeV-TeV γ rays as a neutrino origin. Searches for x-ray and MeV γ-ray counterparts are encouraged, and TeV-PeV neutrinos themselves will serve as special probes of dense source environments.

Original languageEnglish
Article number071101
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume116
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Feb 2016
Externally publishedYes

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