High-Energy Neutrinos and Cosmic Rays from Low-Luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts?

The recently discovered gamma-ray burst (GRB) GRB 060218/SN 2006aj isclassified as an X-ray Flash with very long duration driven possibly by aneutron star. Since GRB 060218 is very near about 140 Mpc and very dim,one-year observation by Swift suggests that the rate of GRB 060218-like eventsmight be very high so that such low luminosity GRBs (LL-GRBs) might form adifferent population from the cosmological high luminosity GRBs (HL-GRBs). Wefound that the high energy neutrino background from LL-GRBs could be comparablewith that from HL-GRBs. If each neutrino event is detected by IceCube, lateroptical-infrared follow-up observations such as by Subaru and HST havepossibilities to identify a Type Ibc supernova associated with LL-GRBs, even ifgamma- and X-rays are not observed by Swift. This is in a sense a new windowfrom neutrino astronomy, which might enable us to confirm the existence ofLL-GRBs and to obtain information about their rate and origin. We also argueLL-GRBs as high energy gamma-ray and cosmic-ray sources.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, minor revisions, accepted for publication in APJ