Particle astrophysics with cosmic neutrinos

Author / Creator

Kheirandish, Ali, author

Available as

Online

Physical

Summary

IceCube's discovery of cosmic neutrinos offers a unique view of our universe and provides powerful insights into some of the most energetic and enigmatic objects in the cosmos. Cosmic neutrinos rev...

IceCube's discovery of cosmic neutrinos offers a unique view of our universe and provides powerful insights into some of the most energetic and enigmatic objects in the cosmos. Cosmic neutrinos reveal an unobstructed view at wavelengths where the universe is opaque to photons. The existence of the cosmic-neutrino flux has challenged our understanding of the universe. It is somewhat counterintuitive that the most surprising property of the observed flux is its magnitude. An immediate inference from the large neutrino flux observed by IceCube, which is predominantly extragalactic in origin, is that the total energy density of neutrinos in the high-energy universe is similar to that of photons. The matching energy densities of the extragalactic gamma-ray flux detected by Fermi and the high-energy neutrino flux measured by IceCube suggest the possibility of a common origin. Therefore, rather than detecting some exotic sources, it looks more likely that IceCube observes the same universe as astronomers do. The finding implies that a large fraction of the energy in the non-thermal universe originates in hadronic processes, indicating a larger level than previously thought. The focus of this dissertation is on identifying the sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos observed in IceCube. Moreover, with the lack of confirmation to date of any source (type of sources) as the dominant contributor to the observed neutrino flux, we have studied prospects for observing different sources in IceCube by considering both transient and steady sources in the sky. Finally, we introduce new techniques to study the strength of neutrino dark matter interactions with the properties of high-energy cosmic neutrinos.

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