Bremen 2000 – scientific programme

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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 10: Kosmische Teilchen und Quanten II

EP 10.2: Talk

Friday, March 24, 2000, 12:00–12:15, H3

Tau Events in Neutrino Telescopes — •Christian Hettlage and Karl Mannheim — Universitäts-Sternwarte Göttingen, Geismarlandstr. 11, D-37083 Göttingen, Germany

The high energy spectra of astrophysical sources such as active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts, and supernova remnants indicate that there exists a significant flux of high energy neutrinos with energies exceeding 100 GeV. In addition, due to neutrino oscillations a large part of the neutrinos reaching earth should be tau neutrinos.

Inelastic scattering in the earth leads to changes in these astrophysical neutrino spectra. We use the CTEQ DIS parton distributions to numerically solve the corresponding transport equations for both mu and tau neutrinos and comment on the possibility of carrying out a tomography of the earth by means of high energy neutrinos.

Investigating possible signatures for tau neutrinos in water-based Cerenkov detectors, we estimate the tau neutrino event rate thus to be expected in next generation neutrino telescopes and discuss its significance for astroparticle physics.