Estimating at earth the ultra-high energy neutrino flux from the accretion disks in the galactic core

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Authors
Banes, Ayshea
Advisors
Solomey, Nickolas
Issue Date
2023-04-07
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Banes, Ayshea. 2023. Estimating at earth the ultra-high energy neutrino flux from the accretion disks in the galactic core. -- In Proceedings: 22nd Annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Forum. Wichita, KS: Wichita State University, p. 10
Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine at Earth the high-energy neutrino flux coming from the galactic core, Sagittarius A∗ (Sgr A∗) and from the many other accretion disks within the galactic bulge. It is estimated that there are 10,000 such accretion disk within the cubic parsec of the galactic core alone and many more in the galactic bulge. There are various neutrino detectors, such as IceCube, which can detect energetic neutrinos, however, the direct galactic core neutrino flux is very low, so very few neutrinos from the galactic core are measured. We created two models to simulate the galactic core neutrino flux. The first model is a simple linear simulation that predominately relied on the properties of the accretion disks and Sgr A∗, which included the quantity, sizes, and distances of the accretion disks. To better estimate the neutrino flux, we replaced the linear accretion disks distribution with a more robust code that randomly distributed the accretion disks and generated bodies of varying sizes. This was then used to determine the ultra-high energy neutrino flux to be 22.797 · 10^−11cm^−2s^−1. Since it is very hard to determine neutrino direction from interactions of neutrinos, we envision an application where the energetic galactic core neutrinos are gravitationally focused by the Sun with a "light" collecting power of 10^11–10^12 and they can interact in a planet's atmosphere where the produced showers containing energetic charged particles can produce Cherenkov rings imageable by an orbiting spacecraft or upward going muons which can be observed in a cosmic ray experiment.

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Presented to the 22nd Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Forum (URCAF) held at the Rhatigan Student Center, Wichita State University, April 7, 2023.
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Wichita State University
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URCAF
v.22
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