High-energy Neutrinos from the Inner Circumnuclear Region of NGC 1068

Abstract

High-energy neutrinos are detected by the IceCube Observatory in the direction of NGC 1068, the archetypical type II Seyfert galaxy. The neutrino flux, surprisingly, is more than an order of magnitude higher than the γ-ray upper limits at measured TeV energy, posing tight constraints on the physical conditions of a neutrino production site. We report an analysis of the submillimeter, mid-infrared, and ultraviolet observations of the central 50 pc of NGC 1068 and suggest that the inner dusty torus and the region where the jet interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM) may be a potential neutrino production site. Based on radiation and magnetic field properties derived from observations, we calculate the electromagnetic cascade of the γ-rays accompanying the neutrinos. When injecting protons with a hard spectrum, our model may explain the observed neutrino flux above ∼10 TeV. It predicts a unique sub-TeV γ-ray component, which could be identified by a future observation. Jet–ISM interactions are commonly observed in the proximity of jets of both supermassive and stellar-mass black holes. Our results imply that such interaction regions could be γ-ray-obscured neutrino production sites, which are needed to explain the IceCube diffuse neutrino flux.