Neutrino production in gamma-ray burst afterglows

Project Description:

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are short (few seconds to minutes) outbursts of gamma-rays that originate either in the core-collapse explosions of very massive stars or in the merger of two neutron stars or a neutron star with a black hole. They have extended (days - weeks) afterglows across the electromagnetic spectrum, understood to result from a blast-wave from the initial explosion slowing down in the surrounding medium. These blast waves are naturally expected to contain protons and other nuclei which can contribute to the high-energy emission. If they do, a natural byproduct of such hadronic interactions would be the production of very-high-energy neutrinos, as detected by the IceCube neutrino detector at the South Pole and Km3NeT, currently under construction in the Mediterranean Sea. IceCube has detected a significant flux of very-high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, whose sources are unknown. GRBs and their afterglows are one possible source. This project studies the possibility of generating very-high-energy neutrinos in GRB afterglows by expanding a semi-analytical model for hadronically dominated GRB afterglow emission, developed by Boettcher & Dermer (1998, ApJ, 499, L131). The model has been developed to estimate the high-energy emission from proton synchrotron radiation and cascades initiated by proton-photon interactions producing pions which subsequently decay to muons, electrons/positrons, and neutrinos. The neutrino production has not been evaluated so far, and the task in this project is to extend the model accordingly.

Research Area:

Astrophysics

Project Level:

Honours

This Project Is Offered At The Following Node(s):

(NWU)

Special Requirements:

Scientific programming skills (e.g., C or Python).