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

TL;DR

This paper proposes that jetted Tidal Disruption Events involving heavy stars like white dwarfs could be the common origin of both ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and PeV neutrinos, explaining observed fluxes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that jetted TDEs with heavy stellar compositions can account for high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos, supported by detailed simulations of particle interactions.

Findings

Jetted TDEs can produce both cosmic rays and neutrinos at observed energies.

Heavy stellar compositions are crucial for matching observed fluxes.

Nuclear cascades develop in TDE jets due to photo-hadronic interactions.

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 develops by photo-hadronic interactions.