On the neutrino flux from Gamma Ray Bursts: an overview

Abstract

Observations imply that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are produced by the dissipation of the kinetic energy of a highly relativistic fireball. Photo-meson interactions of protons with gamma-rays within the fireball dissipation region are expected to convert a significant fraction of the fireball energy into high energy neutrinos. In this talk we summarize the results of an analysis of the internal shock model of GRBs, where production of synchrotron photons and photo-meson neutrinos with energies about 10^14 eV are self-consistently calculated. These neutrinos will be coincident with the GRB. We show that the fraction of fireball energy converted into high energy neutrinos is not sensitive to uncertainties in the fireball model parameters, such as the expansion Lorentz factor and characteristic variability time. Other processes of neutrinos emission from GRBs are also reviewed. Photomeson interactions within the plasma region shocked by the reverse shock, may produce a burst of 10^18 eV neutrinos following the GRB on the time scale of 10 s. Inelastic p-n nuclear collisions result in the production of a burst of around 10 GeV neutrinos in coincidence with the GRB. Planned 1 km^3 neutrino telescopes are expected to detect ten 100 TeV neutrino events and several 10^18 eV events, correlated with GRBs, per year. A suitably densely spaced detector may allow the detection of several 10 GeV events per year.