TY - JOUR
T1 - HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINO EMISSION from WHITE DWARF MERGERS
AU - Xiao, Di
AU - Mészáros, Peter
AU - Murase, Kohta
AU - Dai, Zi Gao
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge support by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program grant 2014CB845800 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant 11573014 (D.X. and D.Z.G.), by the program for studying abroad supported by China Scholarship Council (D.X.), by Pennsylvania State University (K.M.) and by NASA NNX13AH50G (P.M.) The work of K.M. is also supported by NSF Grant No. PHY-1620777.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..
PY - 2016/11/20
Y1 - 2016/11/20
N2 - The merger of two white dwarfs is expected to result in a central fast-rotating core surrounded by a debris disk, in which magnetorotational instabilities give rise to a hot magnetized corona and a magnetized outflow. The dissipation of magnetic energy via reconnection could lead to the acceleration of cosmic-rays (CRs) in the expanding material, which would result in high energy neutrinos. We discuss the possibility of using these neutrino signals as probes of the outflow dynamics, magnetic energy dissipation rate, and CR acceleration efficiency. Importantly, the accompanying high-energy gamma-rays are absorbed within these sources because of the large optical depth, so these neutrino sources can be regarded as hidden cosmic-ray accelerators that are consistent with the non-detection of gamma-rays with Fermi-LAT. While the CR generation rate is highly uncertain, if it reaches , the diffuse neutrino flux could contribute a substantial fraction of the IceCube observations. We also evaluate the prospect of observing individual merger events, which provides a means for testing such sources in the future.
AB - The merger of two white dwarfs is expected to result in a central fast-rotating core surrounded by a debris disk, in which magnetorotational instabilities give rise to a hot magnetized corona and a magnetized outflow. The dissipation of magnetic energy via reconnection could lead to the acceleration of cosmic-rays (CRs) in the expanding material, which would result in high energy neutrinos. We discuss the possibility of using these neutrino signals as probes of the outflow dynamics, magnetic energy dissipation rate, and CR acceleration efficiency. Importantly, the accompanying high-energy gamma-rays are absorbed within these sources because of the large optical depth, so these neutrino sources can be regarded as hidden cosmic-ray accelerators that are consistent with the non-detection of gamma-rays with Fermi-LAT. While the CR generation rate is highly uncertain, if it reaches , the diffuse neutrino flux could contribute a substantial fraction of the IceCube observations. We also evaluate the prospect of observing individual merger events, which provides a means for testing such sources in the future.
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U2 - 10.3847/0004-637X/832/1/20
DO - 10.3847/0004-637X/832/1/20
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84996564436
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 832
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 20
ER -