Abstract
Observations suggest that -ray bursts (GRBs) are produced by the dissipation of the kinetic energy of a relativistic fireball. We show that a large fraction, , of the fireball energy is expected to be converted by photomeson production to a burst of neutrinos. A neutrino detector would observe at least several tens of events per year correlated with GRBs, and test for neutrino properties (e.g., flavor oscillations, for which upward moving 's would be a unique signature, and coupling to gravity) with an accuracy many orders of magnitude better than is currently possible.
- Received 15 January 1997
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.78.2292
©1997 American Physical Society