Speaker
Leonel Morejon
(DESY, Zeuthen)
Description
The origin of high energy astrophysical neutrinos is connected to interactions of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) with low energy photons. For UHECRs nuclei it is often assumed a quasi free interaction between the photon and a nucleon in the nucleus, which implies the yield of mesons (and therefore neutrinos) in nuclei scales with the mass number A. However, pion production in nuclei near threshold energy is known to be reduced compared to the A-scale assumption due to medium effects. An improved photomeson model accounting for these effects has an impact on the neutrino production spectra.
This contribution presents the Empirical Photomeson Model (EPM) and illustrates the impact on the neutrino production in typical TDE and GRB scenarios: a reduction of 30-50% in the peak of the neutrino spectrum produced in UHECRs nuclei photomeson interactions. The EPM can also be used in studies of cosmogenic neutrinos.
The model is available as an open source code to facilitate its use in other frameworks, for example it can be implemented into existing softwares like CRPropa.
Primary author
Leonel Morejon
(DESY, Zeuthen)
