Long-term neutrino afterglows from gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

It is widely believed that multiwavelength afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) originate from relativistic blast waves. We here show that in such blast waves, a significant fraction of the energy of shock-accelerated protons would be lost due to pion production by interactions with afterglow photons. This could lead to long-term production of 1016-1018 eV neutrinos and sub-TeV γ-rays that accompany usual afterglows, provided that the protons are accelerated to 1019 eV in the blast waves.