Speaker
Dr
Maria Petropoulou Petropoulou
(Princeton University)
Description
The IceCube collaboration reported a $\sim 3.5\sigma$ excess of $13\pm5$ neutrino events in the direction of the blazar TXS 0506+056 during a $\sim$6 month period in 2014-2015, as well as the multi-messenger flare of neutrinos and gamma rays with $\sim3\sigma$ in 2017. We explore the possibility that both events are explained in the context of the neutral beam model of blazar jets. We demonstrate that the neutral beam model gives a consistent explanation for the 2014-2015 flare without violating X-ray and gamma-ray constraints, and naturally enhances the neutrino flux by a factor of a few for the 2017 flare. The model implies that blazars, like TXS 0506+56, are efficient accelerators of light cosmic-ray nuclei, such as helium, and that cosmic-ray ions have to carry a significant fraction of the power released via mass accretion onto the central supermassive black hole.
Primary author
Dr
Bing Theodore Zhang
(Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China)
Co-authors
Dr
Foteini Oikonomou
(ESO)
Dr
Kohta Murase
(Penn State University)
Dr
Maria Petropoulou Petropoulou
(Princeton University)
