High-energy neutrino emission from shell-type supernova remnants

¹ Department of Physics, Yunnan University, Kunming, PR China e-mail: fangjun1653@126.com
² Department of Physics, Zhaotong College, Zhaotong, PR China

Received: 2 January 2008
Accepted: 26 March 2008

Abstract

Based on a time-dependent model of particle production and non-thermal photon emission, we study high-energy neutrino emission from shell-type supernova remnants (SNRs). In such a model, particles are accelerated to relativistic energies through the shock acceleration mechanism and evolve with time in an SNR. For a given SNR, therefore, the temporal evolution of the particle energy distribution, the non-thermal spectrum of photons, and the spectrum of neutrinos can be calculated numerically. We apply the model to two young SNRs, G347.3-0.5 and G266.2-1.2, and two old ones, G8.7-0.1 and G23.3-0.3. For each SNR, we determine the parameters involved in the model by comparing the predicted non-thermal spectrum with the observed radio, X-ray and γ-ray data. We study the properties of the corresponding neutrino emission, including the neutrino spectrum and the event rates expected in the next-generation km³-scale neutrino telescope, KM3NeT. Our results indicate that the high-energy TeV γ-rays from the four SNRs are produced predominately via hadronic interaction and that young SNRs such as G266.2-1.2 and G347.3-0.5 are the potential neutrino sources whose neutrinos are most likely to be identified by next-generation km³ neutrino telescopes.