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Issue A&A Volume 378, Number 3, November II 2001 Page(s) L49 - L52 Section Letters DOI 10.1051/0004-6361:20011273

A&A 378, L49-L52 (2001)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20011273

Extragalactic neutrino background from very young pulsars surrounded by supernova envelopes

W. Bednarek

Department of Experimental Physics, University of Lódz, 90-236 Lódz, ul. Pomorska 149/153, Poland

(Received 15 August 2001 / Accepted 10 September 2001)

Abstract
We estimate the extragalactic muon neutrino background which is produced by hadrons injected by very young pulsars at an early phase after supernova explosion. It is assumed that hadrons are accelerated in the pulsar wind zone which is filled with thermal photons captured below the expanding supernova envelope. In collisions with those thermal photons hadrons produce pions which decay into muon neutrinos. At a later time, muon neutrinos are also produced by the hadrons in collisions with matter of the expanding envelope. We show that extragalactic neutrino background predicted by such a model should be detectable by the planned 1 km² neutrino detector if a significant part of pulsars is born with periods shorter than ~10 ms. Since such population of pulsars is postulated by the recent models of production of extremely high energy cosmic rays, detection of neutrinos with predicted fluxes can be used as their observational test.

Key words: diffuse radiation: neutrinos -- supernovae: general -- pulsars: general -- radiation mechanisms: non-thermal -- cosmic rays

© ESO 2001

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