Astrophysical Neutrino Event Rates and Sensitivity for Neutrino Telescopes

Spectacular processes in astrophysical sites produce high-energy cosmic rays which are further accelerated by Fermi-shocks into a power-law spectrum. These, in passing through radiation fields and matter, produce neutrinos. Neutrino telescopes are designed with large detection volumes to observe such astrophysical sources. A large volume is necessary because the fluxes and cross-sections are small. We estimate various telescopes’ sensitivity and expected event rates from astrophysical sources of high-energy neutrinos. We find that an ideal detector of km incident area can be sensitive to a flux of neutrinos integrated over energy from 10 and 10 GeV as low as 1.3 × 10E (GeV/cm s sr) which is three times smaller than the Waxman-Bachall conservative upper limit on potential neutrino flux. Detection from point sources is possible from known bursts and unlikely if there is no prior knowledge of the location and time of the burst. A real detector will have degraded performance. Subject headings: Neutrino flux. Neutrino detection. Neutrino detection rates.