Neutrino emission from high-energy component gamma-ray bursts

Gamma ray bursts have the potential to produce the particle energies (1020 eV) and the energy budget (1044 erg yr-1 Mpc-3) to accommodate the spectrum of the highest energy cosmic rays; on the other hand, there is no evidence that they accelerate hadrons. Fermi recently observed two bursts that exhibit a power-law high-energy extension of the typical (Band) spectrum that extends to ∝ 30 GeV. On the basis of fireball phenomenology we argue that they, along with GRB941017 observed by EGRET in 1994, show indirect evidence for considerable baryon loading. We use two methods to estimate the neutrino flux produced when the baryons interact with fireball photons to produce charged pions and neutrinos. The number of events expected is an order of magnitude larger than for an average burst. We conclude that an event like GRB941017 will be detected by IceCube if gamma ray bursts are indeed the sources of the cosmic rays.