Neutrinos from Colliding Wind Binaries: Future Prospects for PINGU and ORCA

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential for future neutrino detection from colliding wind binaries, assessing the expected signals and the capabilities of upcoming detectors like PINGU and ORCA to improve detection prospects.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed assessment of neutrino signals from colliding wind binaries and discusses how future detectors could enhance detection sensitivity.

Findings

Expected neutrino signals are 5-10 times below current IceCube sensitivity.

Future detectors like PINGU and ORCA could reduce background noise at 25 GeV.

Detection of neutrinos from these sources remains challenging with current technology.

Abstract

Massive stars play an important role in explaining the cosmic ray spectrum below the knee, possibly even up to the ankle, i.e. up to energies of 1e15 eV or 1e18.5 eV, respectively. In particular, Supernova Remnants are discussed as one of the main candidates to explain the cosmic ray spectrum. Even before their violent deaths, during the stars' regular life times, cosmic rays can be accelerated in wind environments. High-energy gamma-ray measurements indicate hadronic acceleration binary systems, leading to both periodic gamma-ray emission from binaries like LSI+60~303 and continuous emission from colliding wind environments like Eta Carinae. The detection of neutrinos and photons from hadronic interactions are one of the most promising methods to identify particle acceleration sites. In this paper, future prospects to detect neutrinos from colliding wind environments in massive stars are investigated. In particular, the seven most promising candidates for emission from colliding wind binaries are investigated to provide an estimate of the signal strength. The expected signal of a single source is about a factor of $5-10$ below the current IceCube sensitivity and it is therefore not accessible at the moment. What is discussed in addition is future the possibility to measure low-energy neutrino sources with detectors like PINGU and ORCA: the minimum of the atmospheric neutrino flux at around 25 GeV from neutrino oscillations provides an opportunity to reduce the background and increase the significance to searches for GeV/TeV neutrino sources. This paper presents the first idea, detailed studies including the detector's effective areas will be necessary in the future to test the feasibility of such an approach.