Tidally disrupted stars as a possible origin of both cosmic rays and neutrinos at the highest energies

Daniel Biehl, Denise Boncioli, Cecilia Lunardini, Walter Winter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) are processes where stars are torn apart by the strong gravitational force near to a massive or supermassive black hole. If a jet is launched in such a process, particle acceleration may take place in internal shocks. We demonstrate that jetted TDEs can simultaneously describe the observed neutrino and cosmic ray fluxes at the highest energies if stars with heavier compositions, such as carbon-oxygen white dwarfs, are tidally disrupted and these events are sufficiently abundant. We simulate the photo-hadronic interactions both in the TDE jet and in the propagation through the extragalactic space and we show that the simultaneous description of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR) and PeV neutrino data implies that a nuclear cascade in the jet is developed by photo-hadronic interactions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number10828
JournalScientific reports
Volume8
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2018

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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