Multi-waveband photons and high energy neutrinos from the Crab nebula

Department of Physics, Yunnan University, 650091 Kunming, PR China e-mail: lizhang@ynu.edu.cn

Received: 28 August 2008
Accepted: 12 January 2009

Abstract

We study multi-waveband photon emission properties and possible high-energy neutrino emission from the Crab nebula produced by pulsar's accelerated heavy nuclei. Heavy nuclei are accelerated in the outer magnetosphere of the Crab pulsar, and then suffer partial photo-disintegration in the non-thermal radiation fields of the pulsar's outer magnetosphere. The products (protons and neutrons) of the photo-disintegration and surviving heavier nuclei are injected into the expanding supernova remnant in which the surviving heavier nuclei are further accelerated in the pulsar wind zone. In such a case, relativistic hadrons and leptons are produced; the hadrons consist of direct protons and the protons produced through neutron decay in nuclei disintegration process, the leptons consist of positrons accelerated in a realistic magneto-sonic lepton-heavy iron plasma shock, electrons from the neutron decay, direct electrons, and secondary electron/positron pairs in a proton-proton interaction. We calculate the photo-disintegration rate for a nucleus of atomic number A releasing i nucleons and the hadronic and leptonic spectra in the Crab nebula. We then calculate the multi-waveband non-thermal photon spectrum and possible high-energy neutrino spectrum of the Crab nebula. Our results indicate that the photon spectrum up to ~10 TeV has a leptonic origin, but it is difficult to distinguish leptonic and hadronic origins of the spectrum with energy greater than 10 TeV.