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TeV neutrinos and hard X-rays from relativistic reconnection in the corona of NGC 1068

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arxiv 2310.18254 v2 pith:WCNFQCQK submitted 2023-10-27 astro-ph.HE

classification astro-ph.HE
keywords energyprotonsreconnectionbreakmagneticnon-thermalrecentabove
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

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abstract

The recent discovery of astrophysical neutrinos from the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068 suggests the presence of non-thermal protons within a compact "coronal" region close to the central black hole. The acceleration mechanism of these non-thermal protons remains elusive. We show that a large-scale magnetic reconnection layer, of the order of a few gravitational radii, may provide such a mechanism. In such a scenario, rough energy equipartition between magnetic fields, X-ray photons, and non-thermal protons is established in the reconnection region. Motivated by recent three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of relativistic reconnection, we assume that the spectrum of accelerated protons is a broken power law, with the break energy being constrained by energy conservation (i.e., the energy density of accelerated protons is at most comparable to the magnetic energy density). The proton spectrum is $dn_p/dE_p\propto E_p^{-1}$ below the break, and $dn_p/dE_p\propto E_p^{-s}$ above the break, with IceCube neutrino observations suggesting $s \simeq 3$. Protons above the break lose most of their energy within the reconnection layer via photohadronic collisions with the coronal X-rays, producing a neutrino signal in good agreement with the recent observations. Gamma-rays injected in photohadronic collisions are cascaded to lower energies, sustaining the population of electron-positron pairs that makes the corona moderately Compton thick.

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Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Bulk Motions in the Black Hole Jet Sheath as a Candidate for the Comptonizing Corona

    astro-ph.HE 2024-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A magnetized jet sheath in a simulated black hole accretion flow carries enough power, dissipation, and trans-relativistic bulk motion to serve as the Comptonizing corona seen in X-ray binaries and active galaxies.

  2. High-Energy Neutrinos from Cosmic-Ray Scatterings with Supernova Neutrinos

    hep-ph 2025-08 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Cosmic-ray boosted supernova neutrinos could be detectable in optimistic astrophysical scenarios and yield a bound of about 30 TeV on the extra-dimensional scale.

  3. Axion-like particle limits from multi-messenger sources

    hep-ph 2025-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A jet-plus-corona model of NGC 1068, constrained by IceCube neutrinos, gives ALP-photon coupling limits g_aγ ≲ 7×10^-11 GeV^-1 for masses below 10^-9 eV, weaker than current bounds but offering a new multi-messenger route.

  4. On the Blueprint of Active Galaxies Producing Neutrinos

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    Neutrinos from active galaxies are produced in compact X-ray-bright coronae within about ten Schwarzschild radii of the black hole, and such sources may supply the diffuse neutrino flux.

  5. Active Galactic Nuclei as high-energy neutrino sources

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 2.5 of 10

    Review summarizing correlations between astrophysical neutrinos and gamma-ray/radio AGN, specific source associations, proposed production mechanisms, and future prospects.

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