Tracing Cosmic accelerators with Decaying Neutrons

Abstract

Ultrahigh energy neutrons and pions are likely to be produced in particle interactions inside cosmic ray sources and subsequently decay to neutrinos and other secondary particles (${\pi }^{\pm }\to {\mu }^{\pm }{\nu }_{\mu }({\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }),{\mu }^{\pm }\to e^{\pm }{\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }({\nu }_{\mu }){\nu }_e({\bar{\nu }}_e)$). In high magnetic fields of the cosmic acceleration sites, the ultrahigh energy charged particles may lose energy significantly due to synchrotron radiation before decay. We show that for gamma ray bursts in the internal shock model the flux of very high energy antineutrinos (${\bar{\nu }}_e$) produced from decaying ultrahigh energy neutrons can be more than the total neutrino flux produced in pion decay depending on the values of their Lorentz factors, luminosities and variability times.

Comments: version published in Phys. Rev. D