Cosmic PeV neutrinos and the sources of ultrahigh energy protons

Matthew D. Kistler, Todor Stanev, Hasan Yüksel
2014 Physical Review D  
The IceCube experiment recently detected the first flux of high-energy neutrinos in excess of atmospheric backgrounds. We examine whether these neutrinos originate from within the same extragalactic sources as ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. Starting from rather general assumptions about spectra and flavors, we find that producing a neutrino flux at the requisite level through pion photoproduction leads to a flux of protons well below the cosmic-ray data at ~10^18 eV, where the composition is
more » ... t, unless pions/muons cool before decaying. This suggests a dominant class of accelerator that allows for cosmic rays to escape without significant neutrino yields.
doi:10.1103/physrevd.90.123006 fatcat:gv7eyfznfragnestrjgu3dak7y