How precisely neutrino emission from supernova remnants can be constrained by gamma ray observations?

Abstract

We propose a conceptually and computationally simple method to evaluate the neutrinos emitted by supernova remnants using the observed gamma-ray spectrum. The proposed method does not require any preliminary parametrization of the gamma ray flux; the gamma ray data can be used as an input. In this way, we are able to propagate easily the observational errors and to understand how well the neutrino flux and the signal in neutrino telescopes can be constrained by gamma-ray data. We discuss the various possible sources of theoretical and systematical uncertainties (e.g., neutrino oscillation parameters, hadronic modeling, etc.), obtaining an estimate of the accuracy of our calculation. Furthermore, we apply our approach to the supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946, showing that neutrino emission is very-well constrained by the H.E.S.S. gamma-ray data: indeed, the accuracy of our prediction is limited by theoretical uncertainties. Neutrinos from RX J1713.7-3946 can be detected with an exposure of the order km^2 year, provided that the detection threshold in future neutrino telescopes will be equal to about 1 TeV.