Origin of the high energy neutrino flux at IceCube

Abstract

We discuss the spectrum of the different components in the astrophysical neutrino flux reaching the Earth and the possible contribution of each component to the high-energy IceCube data. We show that the diffuse flux from cosmic ray interactions with gas in our galaxy implies just 2 events among the 54 event sample. We argue that the neutrino flux from cosmic ray interactions in the intergalactic (intracluster) space depends critically on the transport parameter $δ$ describing the energy dependence in the diffusion coefficient of galactic cosmic rays. Our analysis motivates a E^{-2.1} neutrino spectrum with a drop at PeV energies that fits well the data, including the non-observation of the Glashow resonance at 6.3 PeV. We also show that a cosmic ray flux described by an unbroken power law may produce a neutrino flux with interesting spectral features (bumps and breaks) related to changes in the cosmic ray composition.

19 pages, new section about changes in CR composition, version to appear in ApJ