Abstract
We review observational aspects of the active galactic nuclei and their jets in connection with the detection of high-energy neutrinos by the Antarctic IceCube Neutrino Observatory. We propose that a reoriented jet generated by the spin-flipping supermassive black hole in a binary merger is likely the source of such high-energy neutrinos. Hence they encode important information on the afterlife of coalescing supermassive black hole binaries. As the gravitational radiation emanating from them will be monitored by the future LISA space mission, high-energy neutrino detections could be considered a contributor to multi-messenger astronomy.
Highlights
Electromagnetic radiation has been providing a first observational window to the Universe for about 400 years, while a second window opened with the detection of the first flavour of neutrinos in 1956 and the ultra-high energy cosmic ray particles (UHECRs) in 1962 [2]
Up to date four gravitational wave (GW) detections together with a lower significance candidate from binary black hole sources, and a GW detection from colliding neutron stars were announced by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration [3,4,5,6,7,8]
Two interaction channels were proposed for neutrino production in active galactic nuclei (AGN): one with protons interacting with ambient photons; and another with protons interacting with other protons within the jet or with protons of the external material trapped in the jet flow (e.g., [43,44,45])
Summary
Electromagnetic radiation has been providing a first observational window to the Universe for about 400 years, while a second window opened with the detection of the first flavour of neutrinos in 1956 (electron neutrino, [1]) and the ultra-high energy cosmic ray particles (UHECRs) in 1962 [2]. The third observational window to the Universe opened up on 14th September 2015 [3], when the two Advanced LIGO observatories firstly detected a gravitational wave (GW) signal, emanated from the coalescence of two astrophysical black holes (BH). High-frequency GWs (hfGW, of order of Hz to kHz) are emitted from the coalescence of astrophysical BHs or neutron stars, while low-frequency GWs (lfGW, of order of microHz to milliHz) are emitted from the merging of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In absence of strong relativistic jets, the compact centre of the galaxy is observed as a radio-quiet AGN. In case of these AGN their emission in optical wavelengths might reveal the binary nature of the centre of the galaxy (e.g., [18]). Evidence for a merger is detectable for a long time period, starting just before the actual merger, and persisting for quite a long period afterwards, estimated in thousands of years, based on the traversal time scale for the jet to penetrate initially the inner high density region of the host galaxy (e.g., [19])
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