Pionic Photons and Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray Accelerators

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of upcoming gamma-ray and neutrino telescopes, like CTA and IceCube, to identify cosmic ray sources through multiwavelength observations of supernova remnants, gamma-ray bursts, and active galaxies.

Contribution

It reviews current methods and prospects for identifying cosmic ray sources using new high-energy telescopes and discusses specific astrophysical candidates in detail.

Findings

IceCube's sensitivity enables detection of cosmic ray associated neutrinos.

CTA will provide unprecedented gamma-ray observations of candidate sources.

Multiwavelength approach enhances source identification capabilities.

Abstract

Identifying the accelerators that produce the Galactic and extragalactic cosmic rays has been a priority mission of several generations of high energy gamma ray and neutrino telescopes; success has been elusive so far. Detecting the gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes associated with cosmic rays reaches a new watershed with the completion of IceCube, the first neutrino detector with sensitivity to the anticipated fluxes, and the construction of CTA, a ground-based gamma ray detector that will map and study candidate sources with unprecedented precision. In this paper, we revisit the prospects for revealing the sources of the cosmic rays by a multiwavelength approach; after reviewing the methods, we discuss supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, active galaxies and GZK neutrinos in some detail.