PeV-EeV neutrinos from GRB blast waves in IceCube and future neutrino telescopes

Abstract

Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), if accelerated in the gamma-ray burst (GRB) blast wave, are expected to produce PeV-EeV neutrinos by interacting with long-lived GRB afterglow photons. Detailed spectral and temporal properties of the flux of these neutrinos depend on the GRB blast wave evolution scenario, but can last for days to years time scale in contrast to the seconds to minutes time scale for ``burst'' neutrino flux contemporaneous with the prompt gamma-ray emission and which has been constrained by IceCube in the $\ensuremath{\sim}50\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}\ensuremath{-}2\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{PeV}$ range. We compute expected neutrino events in IceCube in the PeV-EeV range from the blast wave of long-duration GRBs, both for the diffuse flux and for individual GRBs in the nearby universe. We show that IceCube will be able to detect the diffuse GRB blast wave neutrino flux after 5 years in operation, and will be able to distinguish it from the cosmogenic neutrino flux arising from the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin process in case the ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are heavy nuclei. We also show that EeV neutrinos from the blast wave of an individual GRB can be detected with long-term monitoring by a future high-energy extension of IceCube for redshift up to $z\ensuremath{\sim}0.5$.