On the Common Origin of Cosmic Rays across the Ankle and Diffuse Neutrinos at the Highest Energies from Low-luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts

Denise Boncioli,Walter Winter,Daniel Biehl

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aafda7

Denise Boncioli, Walter Winter + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aafda7

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Abstract

Abstract We demonstrate that the ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) produced in the nuclear cascade in the jets of low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts (LL-GRBs) can describe the UHECR spectrum and composition, and at the same time, the diffuse neutrino flux at the highest energies. The radiation density in the source simultaneously controls the neutrino production and the development of the nuclear cascade, leading to a flux of nucleons and light nuclei describing even the cosmic-ray ankle at 5 · 1018 eV. The derived source parameters are consistent with population studies, indicating a baryonic loading factor of about 10. Our results motivate the continued experimental search of LL-GRBs as a unique GRB population.

Highlights

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are extreme electromagnetic outbursts, see, for example, Piran (2004)
We demonstrate that the ultra-high energy cosmic-ray (UHECR) produced in the nuclear cascade in the jet of Low-Luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts (LL-GRBs) can describe the UHECR spectrum and composition and, at the same time, the diffuse neutrino flux at the highest energies
We consider the possibility that low-luminosity GRBs (LL-GRBs, with isotropic luminosity 1049erg s−1) and high-luminosity GRBs (HL-GRBs, with isotropic luminosity 1049erg s−1) are two distinct populations, based on the different local rate of the two samples (Guetta & Della Valle 2007; Liang et al 2007; Virgili et al 2009; Sun et al 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are extreme electromagnetic outbursts, see, for example, Piran (2004). Very tight constraints on neutrinos from HL-GRBs have been obtained by using direction, timing and energy information from GRB catalogues for stacking limits (Abbasi et al 2012; Aartsen et al 2017). These constraints limit the parameter space to low radiation densities, such as high collision radii and low luminosities in the internal shock model – parameters which may not be favorable for HL-GRBs, and point already towards LL-GRBs (Biehl et al 2018a). Note that the luminosity mentioned here represents the X-ray luminosity, which may differ from the intrinsic kinetic luminosity of the jet The latter can be higher by a factor ∼ 100 taking into account the energy conversion efficiency (Aloy et al 2018)

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