The Cannonball Model of Gamma Ray Bursts: high-energy neutrinos and γ-rays

Recent observations suggest that γ-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows are produced by jets of highly relativistic cannonballs (CBs), emitted in supernova (SN) explosions. The CBs, reheated by their collision with the shell, emit radiation that is collimated along their direction of motion and Dopplerboosted to the typical few-hundred keV energy of the GRB. Accompanying the GRB, there should be an intense burst of neutrinos of a few hundreds of GeV energy, made by the decay of charged pions produced in the collisions of the CBs with the SN shell . The neutrino beam carries almost all of the emitted energy, but is much narrower than the GRB beam and should only be detected in coincidence with the small fraction of GRBs whose CBs are moving very close to the line of sight. The neutral pions made in the transparent outskirts of the SN shell decay into energetic γ-rays (EGRs) of energy of O(100) GeV. The EGR beam, whose energy fluence is comparable to that of the companion GRB, is as wide as the GRB beam and should be observable, in coincidence with GRBs, with existing or planned detectors. We derive in detail these predictions of the CB model. CERN-TH/01-121 May 2001