Implications of cosmic ray results for UHE neutrinos

Abstract

Recent measurements of the spectrum and composition of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays suggest that their extragalactic sources may be accelerating heavy nuclei in addition to protons. This can suppress the cosmogenic neutrino flux relative to the usual expectation for an all-proton composition. Cosmic neutrino detectors may therefore need to be even larger than currently planned but conversely they will also be able to provide valuable information concerning astrophysical accelerators. Moreover measurement of ultrahigh energy cosmic neutrino interactions can provide an unique probe of QCD dynamics at high parton density.