Can astrophysical neutrinos trace the origin of the detected ultra-high energy cosmic rays?

Understand

Since astrophysical neutrinos are produced in the interactions of cosmic rays, identifying the origin of cosmic rays using directional correlations with neutrinos is one of the most interesting possibilities of the field.

• For that purpose, especially the Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) are promising, as they are deflected less by extragalactic and Galactic magnetic fields than cosmic rays at lower energies.
• However, photo-hadronic interactions of the UHECRs limit their horizon, while neutrinos do not interact over cosmological distances.
• We study the possibility to search for anisotropies by investigating neutrino-UHECR correlations from the theoretical perspective, taking into account the UHECR horizon, magnetic-field deflections, and the cosmological source evolution.