%0 Journal Article
%T Star-forming galaxies as the origin of the IceCube PeV neutrinos
%A Xiao-Chuan Chang
%A Ruo-Yu Liu
%A Xiang-Yu Wang
%J Physics
%D 2014
%I arXiv
%R 10.1088/0004-637X/805/2/95
%X Star-forming galaxies, due to their high star-formation rates and hence large number of supernova remnants therein, are huge reservoirs of cosmic rays (CRs). These CRs collide with gases in the galaxies and produce high-energy neutrinos through $pp$ collisions. In this paper, we calculate the neutrino production efficiency in star-forming galaxies by considering realistic galaxy properties, such as the gas density and galactic wind in star-forming galaxies. To calculate the accumulated neutrino flux, we use the infrared luminosity function of star-forming galaxies obtained by {\em Herschel} PEP/HerMES survey recently. The intensity of CRs producing PeV neutrinos in star-forming galaxies is normalized with the observed CR flux at EeV ({1\,EeV=$10^{18}\,$eV}), assuming that supernova remnants or hypernova remnants in star-forming galaxies can accelerate protons to EeV energies. Our calculations show that the accumulated neutrino emission produced by CRs in star-forming galaxies can account for the flux and spectrum of the sub-PeV/PeV neutrinos under reasonable assumptions on the CR confinement time in these galaxies.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8361v2