Hadron acceleration in luminous cosmic high-energy neutrino and gamma-ray sources

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Wolfgang Rhode; Professor Dr. Reinhard Schlickeiser
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Astrophysik und Astronomie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2008 bis 2015
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 66741702

Recently, the sensitivity of the AMANDA neutrino detector has reached a level comparable to the Cherenkov telescopes like HEGRA or Whipple in TeV gammas. Therefore, the question if and under which conditions coincident observations of γ-rays and neutrinos are possible, gains increasing importance. Coordinated neutrino and γ-ray observations are crucial to address one of the key questions facing high-energy astrophysics: which primary acceleration mechanism (hadronic or leptonic) is responsible for the increasingly puzzling emission of high luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN). Because of secondary electron production, primary hadronic models always have a strong leptonic component, so that a detailed modeling of mixed leptonic and hadronic acceleration models is required, especially investigating the connection between the neutrino and γ-ray energy spectra and their time behavior. This is the main purpose of this proposal.Systematically, the acceleration of high-energy hadrons by different electromagnetic mechanisms and their transport through the intergalactic matter, radiation and magnetic fields will be calculated. The secondary leptons produced by interactions of the primarily accelerated particles will be tracked to the Earth. Here, the calculated fluxes will be compared to existing measurements of the Cherenkov telescopes like H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS and the neutrino telescopes like IceCube, Baikal or ANTARES. Special emphasis will be put on the isolation of signatures increasing the sensitivity of multi messenger campaigns connected to different energy ranges, e.g. by setting time windows or requiring certain constrains on the time correlation or anti-correlation of signals at different wavelengths.

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen