Gravitational Lensing of Neutrino from Collapsars

Abstract

We study neutrino emission from long gamma-ray bursts. The collapse of very massivestars to black holes, and the consequent jet formation, are expected to produce high-energy neutrinos through photomeson production. Such neutrinos can escape from the source and travel up to the Earth. We focus on the case of Population III progenitors for gamma-ray bursts. Neutrinos can be the only source of information of the first stars formed in the universe. The expected signal is rather weak, but we propose that gravitational lensing by nearby supermassive black holes might enhance the neutrino emission in some cases. We implement a Monte Carlo analysis to ponder the statistical significance of this scenario. We suggest that an observational strategy based on gravitational lensing could lead to the detection of neutrinos from the re-ionization era of the universe with current instrumentation.