Prospects for Galactic TeV Neutrino Astronomy

Abstract. In just the last few years, the catalog of known Galactic TeV gamma-ray sources has grown dramatically, due to the abilities of current air Cerenkov telescopes to measure both the spectrum and morphology of the TeV emission. While these properties can be very well measured, they are not necessarily sucient to determine whether the gamma rays are produced by leptonic or hadronic processes. However, if the gamma-ray emission is hadronic, there must be an accompanying ux of neutrinos, which can be determined from the observed gamma-ray spectrum. The upcoming km3 neutrino telescopes will allow for a direct test of the gamma-ray production mechanism and the possibility of examining the highest possible energies, with important consequences for our understanding of Galactic cosmic-ray production