PeV-EeV neutrinos from GRB blastwave in IceCube and future neutrino telescopes

TL;DR

This paper predicts that IceCube and future neutrino telescopes can detect PeV-EeV neutrinos produced by gamma-ray burst blastwaves, providing insights into UHECR origins and GRB evolution over days to years.

Contribution

It presents detailed predictions of neutrino fluxes from GRB blastwaves and assesses IceCube's capability to detect both diffuse and individual GRB neutrinos in the PeV-EeV range.

Findings

IceCube can detect the diffuse GRB blastwave neutrino flux after 5 years.

Detection of individual GRB neutrinos is possible up to redshift 0.5 with future detectors.

GRB blastwave neutrinos can be distinguished from cosmogenic neutrinos if UHECRs are heavy nuclei.

Abstract

Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), if accelerated in the gamma-ray burst (GRB) blastwave, are expected to produce PeV-EeV neutrinos by interacting with long-lived GRB afterglow photons. Detailed spectral and temporal properties of the flux of these neutrinos depend on the GRB blastwave evolution scenario, but can last for days to years time scale in contrast to the seconds to minutes time scale for "burst" neutrino flux contemporaneous with the prompt gamma-ray emission and which has been constrained by IceCube in the $\sim$ 50 TeV-2 PeV range. We compute expected neutrino events in IceCube in the PeV-EeV range from the blastwave of long-duration GRBs, both for the diffuse flux and for individual GRBs in the nearby universe. We show that IceCube will be able to detect the diffuse GRB blastwave neutrino flux after 5 years of operation, and will be able to distinguish it from the cosmogenic neutrino flux arising from GZK process in case the UHECRs are heavy nuclei. We also show that EeV neutrinos from the blastwave of an individual GRB can be detected with long-term monitoring by a future high-energy extension of IceCube for redshift up to $z\sim 0.5$.