Newly born extragalactic millisecond pulsars as efficient emitters of PeV neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper proposes that newly born extragalactic millisecond pulsars could be significant sources of PeV neutrinos, explaining the IceCube observations through a particle acceleration mechanism involving ultra-high-energy electrons.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model linking extragalactic millisecond pulsars to PeV neutrino production via a two-step acceleration process and estimates the neutrino flux consistent with IceCube data.

Findings

The model's neutrino flux matches IceCube observations at 1-10 PeV.

A small fraction (~0.31%) of pulsar luminosity can produce the observed neutrino flux.

Predicted gamma-ray flux from inverse Compton scattering aligns with observational constraints.

Abstract

The origins of the diffuse flux of cosmogenic PeV neutrinos detected in the IceCube experiment during 2010 - 2017 remain unidentified. A population of extragalactic newly born fast spinning pulsars are investigated as possible candidates for generating the PeV energy scale neutrinos. A two-step mechanism of particle acceleration is adopted for transferring energy from star rotation to high energy electrons. Electrons might be boosted up to $\approx 0.01$ EeV energies and above, and produce ultra-high-energy (UHE) neutrinos and gamma rays when these electrons interact with low energy positrons and soft radiations in the acceleration zone. The theoretically derived extragalactic diffuse muon neutrino flux in the energy range [1-10] PeV is found consistent with the IceCube level if only a fraction ($\eta_{k} \approx 0.31\%$) of the total bolometric luminosity of pulsars are transferred to power the PeV neutrinos. Using the above value of the cosmic ray electron loading parameter $\eta_{k}$, the diffuse gamma ray flux from inverse Compton scattering off UHE electrons in the soft radiation field might be predicted from the model.