Link Bennett, Burgio Fiorella
Department of Physics, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2005 May 13;94(18):181101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.181101. Epub 2005 May 9.
Neutron stars are efficient accelerators for bringing charges up to relativistic energies. We show that if positive ions are accelerated to approximately 1 PeV near the surface of a young neutron star (t(age) less than or nearly 10(5) yr), protons interacting with the star's radiation field produce beamed mu neutrinos with energies of approximately 50 TeV that could produce the brightest neutrino sources at these energies yet proposed. These neutrinos would be coincident with the radio beam, so that, if the star is detected as a radio pulsar, the neutrino beam will sweep the Earth; the star would be a "neutrino pulsar." Looking for nu(mu) emission from young neutron stars will provide a valuable probe of the energetics of the neutron star magnetosphere.
中子星是将电荷加速到相对论能量的高效加速器。我们表明，如果正离子在年轻中子星（年龄t小于或接近10^5年）表面附近被加速到大约1 PeV，质子与恒星辐射场相互作用会产生能量约为50 TeV的成束μ中微子，这可能是目前所提出的在这些能量下最亮的中微子源。这些中微子将与射电波束重合，所以，如果这颗恒星被探测为射电脉冲星，中微子束将会扫过地球；这颗恒星将是一颗“中微子脉冲星”。寻找来自年轻中子星的μ中微子发射将为中子星磁层的能量学提供一个有价值的探测手段。
