2007/11/14 by Ignacio Taboada, Taboada, Ignacio, Michelangelo V. D'Agostino +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0711.2277
arxiv created 2007/11/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
It is standard in theoretical neutrino astrophysics to use a broken power law approximation, based on the Band function, to describe the average photon flux of the prompt emission of Gamma-Ray Bursts. We will show that this approximation overestimates the contribution of high energy gamma-rays (and underestimates low energy gamma-rays). As a consequence models that rely on this approximation overestimate neutrino event rate by a factor of approx 2 depending on Earth's column density in the direction of the GRB. Furthermore the characteristic energy of neutrinos that trigger a km3 detector is typically 1016 eV, higher than previously predicted. We also provide a new broken power law approximation to the Band function and show that it properly represents the photon spectra.