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The Impact of Heavy Nuclei on the Cosmogenic Neutrino Flux

Dan Hooper, Andrew Taylor, Subir Sarkar

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0407618

Abstract

As ultra-high energy cosmic ray protons propagate through the universe, they undergo photo-meson interactions with the cosmic microwave background, generating the `cosmogenic' neutrino flux. If a substantial fraction of the cosmic ray primaries are heavy nuclei rather than protons, however, they would preferentially lose energy through photo-disintegration, so the corresponding neutrino flux may be substantially depleted. We investigate this issue using a Monte Carlo simulation of cosmic ray propagation through interagalactic radiation fields and assess the impact of the altered neutrino fluxes on next generation neutrino telescopes.

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