English

Gravitational lensing of transient neutrino sources by black holes

Astrophysics 2009-06-23 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

In this work we study gravitational lensing of neutrinos by Schwarzschild black holes. In particular, we analyze the case of a neutrino transient source associated with a gamma-ray burst lensed by a supermassive black hole located at the center of an interposed galaxy. We show that the primary and secondary images have an angular separation beyond the resolution of forthcoming km-scale detectors, but the signals from each image have time delays between them that in most cases are longer than the typical duration of the intrinsic events. In this way, the signal from different images can be detected as separate events coming from the very same location in the sky. This would render an event that otherwise might have had a low signal-to-noise ratio a clear detection, since the probability of a repetition of a signal from the same direction is negligible. The relativistic images are so faint and proximate that are beyond the sensitivity and resolution of the next-generation instruments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0802.4251,
  title  = {Gravitational lensing of transient neutrino sources by black holes},
  author = {Ernesto F. Eiroa and Gustavo E. Romero},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.4251},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages; v2: improved version, new references added. Accepted for publication in Physics Letters B