Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray Accelerators in the Cygnus Region of the Galaxy

Abstract

While supernova remnants have been identified as the most likely sources of the galactic cosmic rays, no conclusive observational evidence for this association exists. We show here that IceCube has the possibility of producing incontrovertible evidence by detecting neutrinos produced by the cosmic ray beam interacting with the hydrogen in the vicinity of the supernova shock expanding into the interstellar medium. We show that the observational information on gamma ray fluxes from the Cygnus region, although limited, is sufficient to pinpoint the expected event rate of the neutrinos associated with a single source of 0.5 Crab at the TeV level to within a factor of two, between 2 and 3.8 neutrinos per year. Finally, we note that recent gamma-ray observations reveal the presence of at least three and possibly up to eight such sources, raising the possibility of seeing more than 10 neutrinos per year from these sources alone.