Astrophysical Neutrino Event Rates and Sensitivity for Neutrino Telescopes

Spectacular processes in astrophysical sites produce high-energy cosmic rayswhich are further accelerated by Fermi-shocks into a power-law spectrum. These,in passing through radiation fields and matter, produce neutrinos. Neutrinotelescopes are designed with large detection volumes to observe suchastrophysical sources. A large volume is necessary because the fluxes andcross-sections are small. We estimate various telescopes' sensitivities andexpected event rates from astrophysical sources of high-energy neutrinos. Wefind that an ideal detector of km^2 incident area can be sensitive to a flux ofneutrinos integrated over energy from 10^5 and 10^{7} GeV as low as 1.3 *10^(-8) * E^(-2) (GeV/cm^2 s sr) which is three times smaller than theWaxman-Bachall conservative upper limit on potential neutrino flux. A realdetector will have degraded performance. Detection from known point sources ispossible but unlikely unless there is prior knowledge of the source locationand neutrino arrival time.Comment: Section added +modification