The Impact of Heavy Nuclei on the Cosmogenic Neutrino Flux
ArXiv astro-ph/0407618 (2004)
Authors:
Dan Hooper, Andrew Taylor, Subir Sarkar
Abstract:
As ultra-high energy cosmic ray protons propagate through the universe, they
undergo photo-meson interactions with the cosmic microwave background,
generating the `cosmogenic' neutrino flux. If a substantial fraction of the
cosmic ray primaries are heavy nuclei rather than protons, however, they would
preferentially lose energy through photo-disintegration, so the corresponding
neutrino flux may be substantially depleted. We investigate this issue using a
Monte Carlo simulation of cosmic ray propagation through interagalactic
radiation fields and assess the impact of the altered neutrino fluxes on next
generation neutrino telescopes.
