Differentiating short gamma-ray bursts progenitors through multi-MeV neutrinos
Abstract
With the arrival of future neutrino detectors, a new window is opening to study high-energy astrophysical sources with the help of neutrinos. This work focuses on those neutrinos produced by thermal processes within the progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs), a black hole-neutron star (BH-NS), or a neutron star-neutron star (NS-NS) configuration. Several numerical simulations show that whereas the remnant of the BH-NS merger preserves the magnetic field of the single neutron star (∼1012 G), the magnetic field strength of the post-merger central remnant of NS-NS binary system could be amplified by several orders of magnitude, reaching values of ∼ (1015 -1016) G. Considering the strength of the magnetic field and the opacity created by the baryon-loaded winds ejected in each case, we study the neutrino oscillation and propagation in both scenarios to discriminate between the sGRBs progenitors. We found that it is more feasible to detect neutrinos from BH-NS mergers than those originated from NS-NS since in the second case, the neutrinos cannot go through the medium highly opaque and leave the source freely. In particular, 20 MeV-neutrinos created during an NS-NS merger can hardly leave the progenitor when they propagate with half-opening angles greater than ∼62∘. Finally, we estimate the number of events expected on the future Hyper-Kamiokande detector, finding that it is indeed possible to detect around 20 neutrinos from a burst with a typical photon luminosity of ∼ 8 ×1051 erg s-1 located at 40 Mpc.
- Publication:
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Journal of High Energy Astrophysics
- Pub Date:
- November 2021
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.jheap.2021.09.001
- Bibcode:
- 2021JHEAp..32...87M
- Keywords:
-
- Short gamma-ray burst;
- Thermal neutrinos;
- Neutrino oscillation