Neutrinos produced by ultrahigh-energy photons at high redshift

Some of the proposed explanations for the origin of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays invoke new sources of energetic photons (e.g., topological defects, relic particles, etc.). At high redshift, when the cosmic microwave background has a higher temperature but the radio background is low, the ultrahigh-energy photons can generate neutrinos through pair production of muons and pions. The resulting diffuse background of 10(17) eV neutrinos can be detected by future experiments.     

Relic keV sterile neutrinos and reionization

A sterile neutrino with a mass of several keV can account for cosmological dark matter, as well as explain the observed velocities of pulsars. We show that x rays produced by the decays of these relic sterile neutrinos can boost the production of molecular hydrogen, which can speed up the cooling of gas and the early star formation, which can, in turn, lead to a reionization of the Universe at a high enough redshift to be consistent with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe results.     

Towards the detection of light and heavy relic neutrinos

The standard Big Bang cosmology predicts that the universe is abundantly populated with neutrinos. As expected there are at least 114 neutrinos per cubic centimeter averaged over the whole space. Like the cosmic background radiation the cosmic neutrinos at present posses a very small kinetic energy due to expansion of the universe. This prediction is one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. On the other hand the existence of cosmic neutrinos has not yet been confirmed by direct detection experiments. For now we only have a lower limit on the total mass of this free floating ghostly gas of neutrinos, but even so it is roughly equivalent to the total mass of all the visible stars in universe. There could be many more neutrinos at Earth because of condensation of neutrinos, now moving slowly under the gravitational pull of our galaxy. Here we discuss the possibility of detection of relic neutrinos in KATRIN and MARE experiments via neutrino capture on tritium and rhenium, respectively. We also examine single and double relic neutrino capture on double β-decaying nuclei which might be relevant in the context of the new generation double beta decay experiments. Further we explore feasibility of experiments for detection of heavy sterile neutrinos with masses in MeV region, which may have important astrophysical and cosmological implications.     

Recent Highlights from IceCube

The ~1 km ³ IceCube neutrino observatory was completed in December, 2010 and is taking data on cosmic-ray muons and neutrinos, extraterrestrial neutrinos, and setting limits on a variety of exotic phenomena. This proceeding will cover recent IceCube results, with an emphasis on cosmic rays and on searches for extraterrestrial neutrinos, with a stress on results presented at the 2013 International Cosmic Ray Conference.     

Particle physics on ice: constraints on neutrino interactions far above the weak scale

Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays and neutrinos probe energies far above the weak scale. Their usefulness might appear to be limited by astrophysical uncertainties; however, by simultaneously considering up- and down-going events, one may disentangle particle physics from astrophysics. We show that present data from the AMANDA experiment in the South Pole ice already imply an upper bound on neutrino cross sections at energy scales that will likely never be probed at man-made accelerators. The existing data also place an upper limit on the neutrino flux valid for any neutrino cross section. In the future, similar analyses of IceCube data will constrain neutrino properties and fluxes at the theta(10%) level.     

Atmospheric neutrinos and discovery of neutrino oscillations

Neutrino oscillation was discovered through studies of neutrinos produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere. These neutrinos are called atmospheric neutrinos. They are produced as decay products in hadronic showers resulting from collisions of cosmic rays with nuclei in the atmosphere. Electron-neutrinos and muon-neutrinos are produced mainly by the decay chain of charged pions to muons to electrons. Atmospheric neutrino experiments observed zenith-angle and energy dependent deficit of muon-neutrino events. Neutrino oscillations between muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos explain these data well. Neutrino oscillations imply that neutrinos have small but non-zero masses. The small neutrino masses have profound implications to our understanding of elementary particle physics and the Universe. This article discusses the experimental discovery of neutrino oscillations.     

Cosmological implications of a relic neutrino asymmetry

We consider some cosmological consequences of a relic neutrino asymmetry. A relic neutrino degeneracy enhances the contribution of massive neutrinos to the present energy density of the Universe, and modifies the power spectrum of radiation and matter. We also show that even the smallest neutrino mass consistent with the Super—Kamiokande data is relevant for cosmological models, provided that a relic neutrino asymmetry exists.     

Neutrinoless universe

We consider the consequences for the relic neutrino abundance if extra neutrino interactions are allowed, e.g., the coupling of neutrinos to a light (compared to m(nu)) boson. For a wide range of couplings not excluded by other considerations, the relic neutrinos would annihilate to bosons at late times and thus make a negligible contribution to the matter density today. This mechanism evades the neutrino mass limits arising from large scale structure.     

Neutrino—nucleon cross-section at ultra-high energies in models with large extra dimensions

We examine whether the models with large extra dimensions can provide an explanation for the GZK violating ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR). In these models the neutrino—nucleon cross-section rises rapidly with energy and hence cosmic rays might be identified with neutrinos. We calculate the neutrino-nucleon cross-section at ultra high energies by assuming that it is dominated by the production ofp-branes. We perform the calculation in a generalized Randall-Sundrum model and Lykken-Randall model and find cross-sections of the order of 100 mb at neutrino energies of 10²⁰ eV, which is required for explaining UHECR events.     

Neutrino masses and particle physics beyond the standard model

The evidence for non‐vanishing neutrino masses from solar and atmospheric neutrinos provides the first solid hint towards physics beyond the standard model. A full reconstruction of the neutrino spectrum may well provide a key to the theoretical structures underlying the standard model such as supersymmetry, grand unification or extra space dimensions. In this article we discuss the impact of absolute neutrinos masses on physics beyond the standard model. We review the information obtained from neutrino oscillation data and discuss the prospects of the crucial determination of the absolute neutrino mass scale, as well as the intriguing connection with the Z‐burst model for extreme‐energy cosmic rays.     

On charm production at high energies

A number of new huge neutrino telescopes have been built, are being built, and are planned to be built all over the world. With these setups, cosmic neutrinos of high energies can be studied experimentally. Atmospheric neutrinos represent the main backgrounds to such experiments—namely, the atmospheric neutrinos determine how large a setup should be to measure diffuse cosmic neutrino fluxes or what angular resolution of a setup should be in order that searches for pointlike neutrino sources in the sky be successful. The atmospheric-neutrino fluxes are calculated in the present study. At high energies, the atmospheric-neutrino fluxes consist mostly of neutrinos produced in the atmosphere through charmed-particle decays. Three sources of information about charm production are used: (1) data obtained in accelerator experiments, (2) data on cosmicray muons, and (3) predictions of the NLO and QGSM QCD models for the charm-production at energies not available at modern accelerators. The uncertainties in the calculated fluxes of atmospheric neutrinos from charmed-particle decays are estimated to be at a level of 3–5 orders of magnitude.     

Neutrino and astroparticle physics: Working group report

The contributions made to the Working Group activities on neutrinos and astrophysics are summarized in this article. The topics discussed were inflationary models in Raman-Sundrum scenarios, ultra high energy cosmic rays and neutrino oscillations in 4 flavour and decaying neutrino models.     

Late time neutrino masses, the LSND experiment, and the cosmic microwave background

Models with low-scale breaking of global symmetries in the neutrino sector provide an alternative to the seesaw mechanism for understanding why neutrinos are light. Such models can easily incorporate light sterile neutrinos required by the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector experiment. Furthermore, the constraints on the sterile neutrino properties from nucleosynthesis and large-scale structure can be removed due to the nonconventional cosmological evolution of neutrino masses and densities. We present explicit, fully realistic supersymmetric models, and discuss the characteristic signatures predicted in the angular distributions of the cosmic microwave background.     

Gravitational interaction of neutrinos in models with large extra dimensions

Whenever fields are allowed to propagate in different portions of space-time, the four-dimensional theory exhibits an effective violation of the principle of equivalence. We discuss the conditions under which such an effect is relevant for neutrino physics. In the simplest case of compactification on a flat manifold, the effect of gravity is many orders of magnitude too weak and plays no role for solar neutrino oscillations. Instead, it could be important in the study of ultra high energy neutrinos in cosmic rays. Gravity could also be relevant for lower energy neutrino processes involving bulk sterile states, if the mechanism of compactification is more subtle than that on torii. Received: 12 September 2002 / Revised version: 6 November 2002 / Published online: 24 January 2003     

Monochromatic neutrinos from the annihilation of fourth-generation massive stable neutrinos in the Sun and in the Earth

The accumulation of relic fourth-generation heavy neutrinos (of mass 50 GeV) in the Earth and the Sun, which is followed by their annihilation, is considered. The most conservative estimates of the fluxes of monochromatic electron, muon, and tau neutrinos and antineutrinos of energy 50 GeV from the annihilation of heavy neutrinos are 4.1×10^?6 cm^?2 s^?1 from Earth’s core and 1.1×10^?7 cm^?2 s^?1 from Sun’s core, whence it follows that an analysis of data from underground neutrino observatories may furnish additional information about the existence of fourth-generation neutrinos. It is shown that, because of kinetic equilibrium between the arrival of cosmic neutrinos and their annihilation, the existence of new U(1) gauge interaction of fourth-generation neutrinos has virtually no effect on the estimates of the annihilation fluxes of electron, muon, and tau neutrinos.     

Neutrino astronomy: An update

Detecting neutrinos associated with the still enigmatic sources of cosmic rays has reached a new watershed with the completion of IceCube, the first detector with sensitivity to the anticipated fluxes. In this review, we will briefly revisit the rationale for constructing kilometer-scale neutrino detectors and summarize the status of the field.     

Hybrid method for detecting cascades produced by ultrahigh-energy cosmic particles using a circumlunar satellite

A hybrid method for detecting cosmic rays and neutrino cascades using the radio method and the conventional method for detecting cascade particles was proposed. Cascades produced in the lunar soil near the surface by ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos in the energy range of 1 GeV–100 TeV, coming from above at different angles, were calculated. The calculated energy and angular distributions were extrapolated to the energy region of 10²⁰ eV. Using these results, the detection threshold was estimated as 10²⁰ eV which is approximately identical to the threshold for the radio detector previously considered by the authors.     

AMANDA observations constrain the ultrahigh energy neutrino flux

A number of experimental techniques are currently being deployed in an effort to make the first detection of ultrahigh energy cosmic neutrinos. To accomplish this goal, techniques using radio and acoustic detectors are being developed, which are optimally designed for studying neutrinos with energies in the PeV-EeV range and above. Data from the AMANDA experiment, in contrast, have been used to place limits on the cosmic neutrino flux at less extreme energies (up to approximately 10 PeV). In this Letter, we show that by adopting a different analysis strategy, optimized for much higher energy neutrinos, the same AMANDA data can be used to place a limit competitive with radio techniques at EeV energies. We also discuss the sensitivity of the IceCube experiment, in various stages of deployment, to ultrahigh energy neutrinos.     

Possible manifestations of the existence of a fourth-generation neutrino

A fourth generation of fermions predicted by the phenomenological heterotic string models can possess a new, strictly conserved charge. Among other things, this leads to the hypothesis of the existence of a fourth massive stable neutrino. A comparison of this hypothesis with the data obtained in the DAMA underground experiment to search for massive weakly-interacting cosmic particles with hidden mass and with the EGRET measurements of the >1 GeV galactic gamma-ray background gives a value m≈50 GeV for the possible mass of the fourth neutrino. It is shown that the hypothesis can be checked in accelerator experiments. The positron signal from annihilation of massive relic neutrinos in the galaxy is calculated. A search for this signal is is within the reach of planned cosmic-ray investigations. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 69, No. 6, 402–406 (25 March 1999)     

Massive neutrinos and cosmology

The present experimental results on neutrino flavour oscillations provide evidence for non-zero neutrino masses, but give no hint on their absolute mass scale, which is the target of beta decay and neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments. Crucial complementary information on neutrino masses can be obtained from the analysis of data on cosmological observables, such as the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background or the distribution of large-scale structure. In this review we describe in detail how free-streaming massive neutrinos affect the evolution of cosmological perturbations. We summarize the current bounds on the sum of neutrino masses that can be derived from various combinations of cosmological data, including the most recent analysis by the WMAP team. We also discuss how future cosmological experiments are expected to be sensitive to neutrino masses well into the sub-eV range.