Publisher’s Note: Neutrino flux from cosmic ray accelerators in the Cygnus spiral arm of the Galaxy [Phys. Rev. D76, 067301 (2007)

Abstract

Intriguing evidence has been accumulating for the production of cosmic rays in the Cygnus region of the Galactic plane. We here show that the IceCube experiment can produce incontrovertible evidence for cosmic ray acceleration by observing neutrinos from the decay of charged pions accompanying the TeV photon flux observed in the HEGRA, Whipple, Tibet and Milagro experiments. Our assumption is that the TeV photons observed are the decay products of neutral pions produced by cosmic ray accelerators in the nearby spiral arm of the Galaxy. Because of the proximity of the sources, IceCube will obtain evidence at the 5sigma level in 15 years of observation.