Establishing accretion flares from supermassive black holes as a source of high-energy neutrinos

Author:

van Velzen Sjoert1,Stein Robert234ORCID,Gilfanov Marat56,Kowalski Marek23,Hayasaki Kimitake78,Reusch Simeon23,Yao Yuhan9,Garrappa Simone23,Franckowiak Anna210,Gezari Suvi1112,Nordin Jakob3,Fremling Christoffer4,Sharma Yashvi9,Yan Lin13,Kool Erik C14ORCID,Stern Daniel15,Veres Patrik M10ORCID,Sollerman Jesper14ORCID,Medvedev Pavel6ORCID,Sunyaev Rashid65,Bellm Eric C16,Dekany Richard G13,Duev Dimitri A4,Graham Matthew J4ORCID,Kasliwal Mansi M4ORCID,Kulkarni Shrinivas R4,Laher Russ R17,Riddle Reed L13ORCID,Rusholme Ben17ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Leiden Observatory, Leiden University , Postbus 9513, NL-2300 RA Leiden , the Netherlands

2. Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron DESY , Platanenallee 6, D-15738 Zeuthen , Germany

3. Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin , D-12489 Berlin , Germany

4. Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125 , USA

5. Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik , Karl-Schwarzschild-Str 1, D-85741 Garching , Germany

6. Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences , Profsoyuznaya ul. 84/32, Moscow 117997 , Russia

7. Department of Astronomy and Space Science, Chungbuk National University , Cheongju 361-763 , Republic of Korea

8. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics , 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 , USA

9. Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , MC 249-17, 1200 E California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125 , USA

10. Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie , Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum , Germany

11. Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, MD 21218 , USA

12. Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland , College Park, MD 20742 , USA

13. Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125 , USA

14. The Oskar Klein Centre, Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University , AlbaNova, SE-10691, Stockholm , Sweden

15. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology , 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Mail Stop 169-221, Pasadena, CA 91109 , USA

16. DIRAC Institute, Department of Astronomy, University of Washington , 3910 15th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98195 , USA

17. IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91125 , USA

Abstract

ABSTRACT The origin of cosmic high-energy neutrinos remains largely unexplained. For high-energy neutrino alerts from IceCube, a coincidence with time-variable emission has been seen for three different types of accreting black holes: (1) a gamma-ray flare from a blazar (TXS 0506+056), (2) an optical transient following a stellar tidal disruption event (TDE; AT2019dsg), and (3) an optical outburst from an active galactic nucleus (AGN; AT2019fdr). For the latter two sources, infrared follow-up observations revealed a powerful reverberation signal due to dust heated by the flare. This discovery motivates a systematic study of neutrino emission from all supermassive black hole with similar dust echoes. Because dust reprocessing is agnostic to the origin of the outburst, our work unifies TDEs and high-amplitude flares from AGN into a population that we dub accretion flares. Besides the two known events, we uncover a third flare that is coincident with a PeV-scale neutrino (AT2019aalc). Based solely on the optical and infrared properties, we estimate a significance of 3.6σ for this association of high-energy neutrinos with three accretion flares. Our results imply that at least ∼10 per cent of the IceCube high-energy neutrino alerts could be due to accretion flares. This is surprising because the sum of the fluence of these flares is at least three orders of magnitude lower compared to the total fluence of normal AGN. It thus appears that the efficiency of high-energy neutrino production in accretion flares is increased compared to non-flaring AGN. We speculate that this can be explained by the high Eddington ratio of the flares.

Funder

National Science Foundation

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

California Institute of Technology

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

MEXT

INAF

CNES

NRF

Ministry of Education

Heising-Simons Foundation

Wenner-Gren Foundations

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

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