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Researchers have developed a theoretical model showing that ultra-high-energy neutrinos with energies above 1 PeV can produce detectable TeV-scale photons when they interact with nucleons in the outer regions of dense astrophysical environments. The model calculates that over 13% of these neutrino interactions generate photons exceeding 1 TeV in energy through a process involving secondary particle production and decay. The authors demonstrate this mechanism can explain the TeV photons detected before gamma-ray burst GRB 221009A, providing a quantitative link between neutrino and gamma-ray observations.
Why it matters
This work establishes a concrete physical mechanism connecting ultra-high-energy neutrino detections with gamma-ray observations, advancing multi-messenger astronomy by enabling scientists to better interpret simultaneous signals from extreme cosmic events and understand particle acceleration in environments near compact objects like neutron stars and black holes.
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⚠️ Preprint – Noch nicht peer-reviewed
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Abstract: Recent observations by IceCube and KM3Net of PeV-scale ultra-high-energy (UHE) neutrinos, together with detections of TeV-PeV photons from various sources such as the Crab Nebula, the Galactic Center, and gamma-ray burst by ground-based observatories including Tibet AS$gamma$, MAGIC, Carpet-3, and LHAASO, point to the existence of extreme astrophysical environments capable of accelerating particles to ultra-high energies. These findings motivate investigations of possible connections between UHE neutrinos and photons in such environments. Theoretically, dense regions surrounding compact objects can efficiently produce UHE neutrinos. In this work, we calculate the production of UHE photons from neutrino-nucleon interactions, and note that if these interactions occur in the outer, optically thin regions of dense environments, the resulting photons could potentially be observed. In our model, an incident neutrino scatters off a nucleon, generating secondary partons that hadronize into pions and subsequently decay into UHE photons. We calculate the resulting photon energy spectra and find that for incident (anti)neutrinos with energies above 1 PeV, the probability of producing photons with energies exceeding 1 TeV is greater than 13%. As a concrete application, we show that this mechanism can quantitatively account for the preburst TeV photons observed in GRB 221009A, providing a natural explanation for both their energies and lead times. These findings establish a plausible mechanism linking UHE neutrino events to gamma-ray observations, providing new insights into hadronic processes in extreme astrophysical environments and supporting multi-messenger astronomy studies.
Source: Generation of TeV Photons by PeV Neutrinos in Dense Astrophysical Environments