High Energy Neutrinos from Cosmological Gamma-Ray Burst Fireballs

Observations suggest that -ray bursts (GRBs) are produced by the dissipation of the kinetic energy of a relativistic fireball. We show that a large fraction, 10%, of the fireball energy is expected to be converted by photomeson production to a burst of 10^14eV neutrinos. A km^2 neutrino detector would observe at least several tens of events per year correlated with GRBs, and test for neutrino properties (e. g. , flavor oscillations, for which upward moving 's would be a unique signature, and coupling to gravity) with an accuracy many orders of magnitude better than is currently possible.