Neutrinos from super-Eddington Seyfert galaxies
Lucas M. Pasquevich, Gustavo E. Romero, Matías M. Reynoso
astro-ph.HE
Submitted: 2026-07-03
Comments: Under review for minor corrections in Astroparticle Physics
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Multimessenger observations suggest that Seyfert galaxies are promising sources of high-energy neutrinos, but their dense inner environments can strongly suppress the emerging very-high-energy
Terminology
Abstract
Multimessenger observations suggest that Seyfert galaxies are promising sources of high-energy neutrinos, but their dense inner environments can strongly suppress the emerging very-high-energy gamma-ray emission. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) undergoing intense accretion episodes can enter a super-Eddington state, in which the accretion flow becomes geometrically and optically thick within a critical radius and develops strong magnetic fields in its innermost region. At the same time, large amounts of matter are expelled from the disk surface in the form of powerful, radiation-driven winds. In this work, we explore a scenario in which the cores of super-Eddington AGN provide suitable conditions for the acceleration of relativistic particles, including hadrons, via magnetic reconnection in a magnetically confined region close to the supermassive black hole. The accelerated hadronic component interacts with the intense photon field of the disk, leading to a copious neutrino flux peaking at 10-100 TeV that may be detectable with current observatories such as IceCube and KM3NeT, while the surrounding outflow efficiently absorbs the accompanying gamma-ray emission from the inner core. We also apply the model to the nearby super-Eddington Seyfert 1 NGC 7469 as a representative case with two reported neutrino events. In this framework, super-Eddington AGN, in particular Seyfert galaxies undergoing transient intense accretion episodes, emerge as plausible hidden neutrino sources, offering a natural explanation for the coexistence of efficient neutrino production and a strongly attenuated gamma-ray counterpart.
Sources
- IceCube-Gen2: The Window to the Extreme Universe
- Electromagnetic signatures of black hole clusters in the center of super-Eddington galaxies
- Time-integrated Neutrino Source Searches with 10 years of IceCube Data
- Super Winds and Radio Emission in X-ray Binary Systems
- Time-Integrated Southern-Sky Neutrino Source Searches with 10 Years of IceCube Starting-Track Events at Energies Down to 1 TeV
- Evidence for Neutrino Emission from X-Ray-bright Active Galactic Nuclei with IceCube
- Constraints on gamma-ray and neutrino emission from NGC 1068 with the MAGIC telescopes
- Evidence for neutrino emission from X-ray Bright Seyfert Galaxies in the Southern Hemisphere using Enhanced Starting Track Events with IceCube
- Broad-band diffuse gamma ray emission of the Galactic Disk
- Absorption of high-energy gamma rays in Cygnus X-3
- Testing the magnetic flux paradigm for AGN radio loudness with a radio intermediate quasar
- Probing narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies in the southern hemisphere
- Bright X-ray pulsars as sources of MeV neutrinos in the sky
- Super-Eddington accretion rates in Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies
- Are T Tauri stars gamma-ray emitters?
- Super-Eddington accretion in the Q2237+0305 quasar?
- Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. IV. H$\beta$ Time Lags and Implications for Super-Eddington Accretion
- Absorbed relativistic jets in radio-quiet narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies
- Spinning black holes magnetically connected to a Keplerian disk -- Magnetosphere, reconnection sheet, particle acceleration and coronal heating
- Nine tidal disruption event candidates in eROSITA-DE DR1 discovered through supersoft X-ray selection
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