Neutrino origin of LHAASO's 18 TeV GRB221009A photon

• Published in: Physics letters. B Vol. 839; p. 137763
• Main Authors: Brdar, Vedran, Li, Ying-Ying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 10-04-2023; Elsevier
• ISSN: 0370-2693; 1873-2445
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2023.137763

LHAASO collaboration detected photons with energy above 10 TeV from the most recent gamma-ray burst (GRB), GRB221009A. Given the redshift of this event, z∼0.15, photons of such energy are expected to interact with the diffuse extragalactic background light (EBL) well before reaching Earth. In this paper we provide a novel neutrino-related explanation of the most energetic 18 TeV event reported by LHAASO. We find that the minimal viable scenario involves both mixing and transition magnetic moment portal between light and sterile neutrinos. The production of sterile neutrinos occurs efficiently via mixing while the transition magnetic moment portal governs the decay rate in the parameter space where tree-level decays via mixing to non-photon final states are suppressed. Our explanation of this event, while being consistent with the terrestrial constraints, points to the non-standard cosmology.