2010/03/24 by Julia K. Becker, J. K. Becker, Francis Halzen +9
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1003.4710
20 pages, 6 figures. This paper is a greatly expanded and revised version of arXiv:0911.2202. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
arxiv created 2010/03/24 · openalex publication_date 2010/03/24 · arxiv updated 2010/03/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Gamma-ray bursts have the potential to produce the particle energies (up to 1021 eV) and the energy budget (1044 \rmerg yr-1 Mpc-3) to accommodate the spectrum of the highest energy cosmic rays; on the other hand, there is no observational evidence that they accelerate hadrons. The Fermi GST recently observed two bursts that exhibit a power-law high-energy extension of the typical (Band) photon spectrum that extends to ∼ 30 GeV. On the basis of fireball phenomenology we argue that they, along with GRB941017 observed by EGRET in 1994, show indirect evidence for considerable baryon loading. Since the detection of neutrinos is the only unambiguous way to establish that GRBs accelerate protons, we use two methods to estimate the neutrino flux produced when they interact with fireball photons to produce charged pions and neutrinos. While the number of events expected from the Fermi bursts detected to date is small, we conclude that an event like GRB941017 will be detected by the IceCube neutrino telescope if gamma-ray bursts are indeed the sources of the observed cosmic rays.