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Abstract Active galactic nuclei (AGN) can accelerate protons to energies of ∼10–100 TeV, with secondary production of high-energy neutrinos. If the acceleration is driven by magnetized turbulence, the main properties of the resulting proton and neutrino spectra can be deduced based on insights from particle-in-cell simulations of magnetized turbulence. We have previously shown that these properties are consistent with the TeV neutrino signal observed from the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068. In this work, we extend this result to a population study. We show that the produced neutrino flux depends mainly on the energetics of the corona—the relative fractions of X-ray, magnetic, and nonthermal proton energy—and on the spectral energy distribution of the AGN. We find that coronae with similar properties can explain neutrinos from the candidate AGN for which IceCube has reported an excess, albeit less significant than NGC 1068. Building on this framework, we show how the neutrino signal evolves with AGN luminosity, and use this AGN sequence to predict the diffuse neutrino flux from the extragalactic population, showing that it can account for the diffuse neutrino signal observed by IceCube in the ∼1–100 TeV energy range.
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This content will become publicly available on June 1, 2027
Neutrinos and Gamma Rays from Seyfert Galaxies Constrain the Properties of Coronal Turbulence
Abstract The TeV neutrino signal observed by IceCube from the active galactic nucleus NGC 1068 can probe its innermost coronal regions. If these neutrinos originate from hadrons accelerated within a magnetized turbulent corona, their intensity and spectrum depend on the turbulent magnetic field strength and turbulence coherence scale. The gamma rays accompanying neutrino production are absorbed in this optically thick environment, in a way that depends sensitively on the size of the corona. By a joint fit of the IceCube and Fermi-LAT observations, we translate the multimessenger signal from NGC 1068 and the tentative signal from NGC 7469 into quantitative constraints on coronal properties. NGC 1068, with a significant TeV neutrino excess, favors a compact, strongly magnetized corona with a large turbulence coherence length relative to the coronal size. NGC 7469, with two ∼100 TeV neutrino events, points instead to a somewhat larger corona with much smaller coherence length and high magnetization, but a very small fraction of energy in nonthermal protons. We obtain the diffuse flux from a population of Seyfert galaxies identical to either NGC 1068 or NGC 7469. Finally, we consider a third scenario, motivated by the spectral break observed in the diffuse neutrino flux at tens of TeV, with coronal properties intermediate between the two point-source-inspired models. To enable detailed comparisons with the IceCube and electromagnetic observations, we release our model predictions in a GitHub repository.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2308944
- PAR ID:
- 10692466
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Astronomical Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 1004
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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