A concordance scenario for the observed neutrino from a tidal disruption event

Winter, Walter; Lunardini, Cecilia

doi:10.1038/s41550-021-01305-3

Journal Article

PUBDB-2021-03165

A concordance scenario for the observed neutrino from a tidal disruption event

Winter, W. (Corresponding author)DESY* ; Lunardini, C.Extern*

2021
Nature Publishing Group London

Nature astronomy 5, 472 - 477 (2021) [10.1038/s41550-021-01305-3]

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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1038/s41550-021-01305-3 doi:10.3204/PUBDB-2021-03165

Report No.: DESY-20-088; arXiv:2005.06097

Abstract: During a tidal disruption event, a star is torn apart by the tidal forces of a supermassive black hole, with about 50% of the star’s mass eventually accreted by the black hole. The resulting flare can, in extreme cases of super-Eddington mass accretion, result in a relativistic jet1,2,3,4. While tidal disruption events have been theoretically proposed as sources of high-energy cosmic rays5,6 and neutrinos7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, stacking searches indicate that their contribution to the diffuse extragalactic neutrino flux is very low15. However, a recent association of a track-like astrophysical neutrino (IceCube-191001A16) with a tidal disruption event (AT2019dsg17) indicates that some tidal disruption events can accelerate cosmic rays to petaelectronvolt energies. Here we introduce a phenomenological concordance scenario with a relativistic jet to explain this association: an expanding cocoon progressively obscures the X-rays emitted by the accretion disk, while at the same time providing a sufficiently intense external target of backscattered X-rays for the production of neutrinos via proton–photon interactions. We also reproduce the delay (relative to the peak) of the neutrino emission by scaling the production radius with the black-body radius. Our energetics and assumptions for the jet and the cocoon are compatible with expectations from numerical simulations of tidal disruption events.

Keyword(s): neutrino: production ; X-ray: emission ; jet: relativistic ; numerical calculations ; backscatter ; black body ; accretion ; scaling ; photon pi ; IceCube

Classification:

ddc:520

Contributing Institute(s):

Theoretische Astroteilchenphysik (Z_THAT)

Research Program(s):

Experiment(s):

No specific instrument

Appears in the scientific report 2021

Database coverage:
Medline

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