Testing hadronic and photo-hadronic interactions as responsible for UHECR and neutrino fluxes from Starburst Galaxies

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether starburst galaxies can be the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos by modeling hadronic interactions and comparing the results with observations.

Contribution

It introduces a modified Monte Carlo simulation to analyze hadronic processes in starburst environments for the first time.

Findings

Spallation reactions may dominate neutrino production depending on gas density.

The model's flux predictions are consistent with observed cosmic ray and neutrino data.

Parameter space analysis constrains source characteristics.

Abstract

We test the hypothesis of starburst galaxies as sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and high-energy neutrinos. The computation of interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the starburst environment as well as in the propagation to the Earth is made using a modified version of the Monte Carlo code {\it SimProp}, where hadronic processes in the environment of sources are implemented for the first time. Taking into account a star-formation-rate distribution of sources, the fluxes of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and high-energy neutrinos are computed and compared with observations, and the explored parameter space for the source characteristics is discussed. We find that, depending on the density of the gas in the source environment, spallation reactions could exceed theoutcome in neutrinos from photo-hadronic interactions in the source environment and in the extra-galactic space.