English

Can a Single High-energy Neutrino from Gamma-ray Bursts be a Discovery?

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-06-22 v2

Abstract

Current emission models of GeV-PeV neutrinos from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) predict a neutrino flux with 1\ll 1 detected neutrinos per GRB with kilometer-scale neutrino observatories. The detection of this flux will require the stacking of data from a large number of GRBs, leading to an increased background rate, decreasing the significance of a single neutrino detection. We show that utilizing the temporal correlation between the expected gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes, one can significantly improve the neutrino signal-to-noise ratio. We describe how this temporal correlation can be used. Using realistic GRB and atmospheric neutrino fluxes and incorporating temporal, spectral and directional information, we estimate the probability of a single detected GRB-neutrino being a 5σ\sigma discovery.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.1217,
  title  = {Can a Single High-energy Neutrino from Gamma-ray Bursts be a Discovery?},
  author = {Imre Bartos and Szabolcs Marka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.1217},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 2 figures. Accepted to PRD Rapid Communication