Galactic PeV Neutrinos

IceCube experiment has detected two neutrinos with energies beween 1-10 PeV. They might have originated from Galactic or extragalactic sources of cosmic rays. In the present work we consider hadronic interactions of the diffuse very high energy cosmic rays with the interstellar matter within our Galaxy to explain the PeV neutrino events detected in IceCube. We also expect PeV gamma ray events along with the PeV neutrino events if the observed PeV neutrinos were produced within our Galaxy in hadronic interactions. PeV gamma rays are unlikely to reach us from sources outside our Galaxy due to pair production with cosmic background radiations. We suggest that in future with simultaneous detections of PeV gamma rays and neutrinos it would be possible to distinguish between Galactic and extragalactic origins of very high energy neutrinos.Comment: 5 pages, version to be published in Astroparticle Physic

Prompt Emission of High Energy Photons from Gamma Ray Bursts

Within the internal shock scenario we consider different mechanisms of high energy ($>1$ MeV) photon production inside a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) fireball and derive the expected high energy photon spectra from individual GRBs during the prompt phase. The photon spectra of leptonic and hadronic origins are compared within different sets of parameter regimes. Our results suggest that the high energy emission is dominated by the leptonic component if fraction of shock energy carried by electrons is not very small (e.g. $\epsilon_e > 10^{-3}$). For very small values of $\epsilon_e$ the hadronic emission component could be comparable to or even exceed the leptonic component in the GeV-TeV regime. However, in this case a much larger energy budget of the fireball is required to account for the same level of the observed sub-MeV spectrum. The fireballs are therefore extremely inefficient in radiation. For a canonical fireball bulk Lorentz factor (e.g. $\Gamma=400$), emissions above $\sim 10$ GeV are attenuated by two-photon pair production processes. For a fireball with an even higher Lorentz factor, the cutoff energy is higher, and emissions of 10 TeV - PeV due to $\pi^0$-decay can also escape from the internal shocks. The flux level is however too low to be detected by current TeV detectors, and these photons also suffer attenuation by external soft photons.Comment: 18 pages 10figures, version to be published in MNRA

A lepto-hadronic model of gamma rays from the Eta Carinae and prospects for neutrino telescopes

The stellar binary $\eta$ Carinae has been observed during its full orbital period in gamma rays by the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT). The shock-accelerated electrons in the colliding winds of the two stars radiate synchrotron photons in the magnetic field of the shocked region and inverse Compton photons, where the target photons are from the thermal emissions by the more massive and luminous of the two stars. The inverse Compton emission dominates the gamma-ray flux data from the $\eta$ Carinae, however the spectral energy distribution shows signature of a hadronic component in the $\sim 10$-300 GeV range during the periastron passage. Current and future air Cherenkov telescopes will be able to constrain this component at TeV energies. Acceleration of cosmic-ray protons to $\gg 1$ TeV energies in the colliding winds, required to explain the hadronic emission component through photopion interactions, can lead to detectable signal of $\gtrsim 10$ TeV neutrino events in large kilometer scale neutrino telescopes.Comment: 8 pages and 5 figures. Added gamma-gamma pair production calculation and expanded discussion. Main results unchanged. Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Long term study of the light curve of PKS 1510-089 in GeV energies

We have analyzed data from the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar PKS 1510-089 collected over a period of 8 years from August 2008 to December 2016 with the Fermi-LAT. We have identified several flares of this highly variable source, studied their temporal and spectral properties in detail and compared with previous works on flares of PKS 1510-089. Five major flares and few sub-flares/sub-structures have been identified in our study. The fastest variability time is found to be 1.30$\pm$0.18 hr between MJD 55852.063 and 55852.188 where we estimate the minimum size of the emission region to be $4.85 \times 10^{15}$ cm. In most of the flares the spectral energy distributions are better fitted with Logparabolic distribution compared to simple Power law or Power law with exponential cut-offs. This has strong physics implications regarding the nature of the high energy gamma-ray emission region.Comment: 29 pages, 29 figures, Accepted in Ap