Very High Energy Antineutrinos from Photo-disintegration of Cosmic Ray Nuclei

TL;DR

This paper calculates the secondary antineutrino flux from cosmic ray nuclei photo-disintegration near the Galactic plane, finding it insufficient to explain IceCube observations, and concludes extragalactic contributions are minimal due to low flux.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative estimate of antineutrino flux from cosmic ray nuclei photo-disintegration, highlighting its limited role in high-energy neutrino observations.

Findings

Calculated flux is much less than IceCube measurements.

Upper limit on extragalactic radiation field is lower than near Galactic center.

Photo-disintegration contribution is insignificant at extragalactic scales.

Abstract

The photo-disintegration of cosmic ray nuclei by starlight leads to the production of secondary antineutrinos. We have assumed that the flux of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray nuclei near the Galactic plane region is the same as that observed near the earth and calculated the antineutrino flux produced from their photo-disintegration. The IceCube detector has measured the neutrino/antineutrino flux in the TeV-PeV energy range. Our calculated secondary antineutrino flux in the energy range of 10-100 TeV is found to be much less compared to the flux detected by the IceCube collaboration. The upper limit on the intensity of the radiation field in the extragalactic medium is much lower than that near the Galactic center. If we extend our formalism to the extragalactic medium the contribution from the photo-disintegration of ultrahigh energy cosmic ray heavy nuclei remains insignificant due to their very low flux.