Cosmogenic neutrinos and ultra-high energy cosmic ray models

TL;DR

This paper uses an updated simulation to predict cosmogenic neutrino fluxes from ultra-high energy cosmic rays, compares them with recent IceCube and Pierre Auger data, and discusses implications for cosmic ray source models.

Contribution

It introduces an updated Monte Carlo simulation for cosmic ray propagation and analyzes its implications for source models based on recent neutrino and cosmic ray data.

Findings

Neutrino flux predictions are close to current experimental limits.

Source models are increasingly constrained by observational data.

Future observatories will have enhanced discovery potential.

Abstract

We use an updated version of {\it SimProp}, a Monte Carlo simulation scheme for the propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, to compute cosmogenic neutrino fluxes expected on Earth in various scenarios. These fluxes are compared with the newly detected IceCube events at PeV energies and with recent experimental limits at EeV energies of the Pierre Auger Observatory. This comparison allows us to draw some interesting conclusions about the source models for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. We will show how the available experimental observations are almost at the level of constraining such models, mainly in terms of the injected chemical composition and cosmological evolution of sources. The results presented here will also be important in the evaluation of the discovery capabilities of the future planned ultra-high energy cosmic ray and neutrino observatories.