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TeV mu Neutrinos from Young Neutron Stars

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v3 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

Neutron stars are efficient accelerators for bringing charges up to relativistic energies. We show that if positive ions are accelerated to ~1 PeV near the surface of a young neutron star (t_age < about 10^5 yr), protons interacting with the star's radiation field will produce beamed mu neutrinos with energies of ~50 TeV that could produce the brightest neutrino sources at these energies yet proposed. These neutrinos would be coincident with the radio beam, so that if the star is detected as a radio pulsar, the neutrino beam will sweep the Earth; the star would be a ``neutrino pulsar''. Looking for muon neutrino emission from young neutron stars will provide a valuable probe of the energetics of the neutron star magnetosphere.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0412520,
  title  = {TeV mu Neutrinos from Young Neutron Stars},
  author = {B. Link and Fiorella Burgio},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0412520},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages. Editorial changes and typos corrected