Neutrinos as a signature of ultrahigh energy photons at high red shift

Marieke Postma

Published 2001-02-08Version 1

Sources of ultrahigh energy photons operating at high red shift produce a diffuse background of neutrinos. At high red shift, when the cosmic microwave background radiation has a higher temperature, an electromagnetic cascade originated by an energetic photon can generate neutrinos via muon and pion production and decay. We have calculated numerically the neutrino spectrum produced by various photon sources. A distinctive feature of the produced flux is a ``bump'' in the spectrum at neutrino energies $E \sim 10^{17}$eV. The produced flux is largest for $m=3$ sources ({\it e.g} necklaces), with $E^2 J(E) \sim 10 {\rm eV} {\rm cm}^{-2} {\rm s}^{-1} {\rm sr}^{-1}$ at these energies. Detection of such neutrinos can help understand the origin of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays.