A Multimessenger Picture of the Flaring Blazar TXS 0506+056: implications for High-Energy Neutrino Emission and Cosmic Ray Acceleration

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the flaring blazar TXS 0506+056 using multimessenger data to understand its particle acceleration and neutrino emission, highlighting the importance of cascade effects and the implications for cosmic-ray acceleration.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, physically consistent model of TXS 0506+056's emissions, constraining its neutrino and cosmic-ray outputs, and emphasizes the role of electromagnetic cascades in multimessenger observations.

Findings

A hybrid leptonic model explains the emissions and neutrino production.

X-ray emissions better probe hadronic processes than gamma-ray emissions.

Conditions in the jet are optimal for neutrino production but not for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Abstract

Detection of the IceCube-170922A neutrino coincident with the flaring blazar TXS 0506+056, the first and only 3-sigma high-energy neutrino source association to date, offers a potential breakthrough in our understanding of high-energy cosmic particles and blazar physics. We present a comprehensive analysis of TXS 0506+056 during its flaring state, using newly collected Swift, NuSTAR, and X-shooter data with Fermi observations and numerical models to constrain the blazar's particle acceleration processes and multimessenger (electromagnetic and high-energy neutrino) emissions. Accounting properly for electromagnetic cascades in the emission region, we find a physically-consistent picture only within a hybrid leptonic scenario, with gamma-rays produced by external inverse-Compton processes and high-energy neutrinos via a radiatively-subdominant hadronic component. We derive robust constraints on the blazar's neutrino and cosmic-ray emissions and demonstrate that, because of cascade effects, the 0.1-100keV emissions of TXS 0506+056 serve as a better probe of its hadronic acceleration and high-energy neutrino production processes than its GeV-TeV emissions. If the IceCube neutrino association holds, physical conditions in the TXS 0506+056 jet must be close to optimal for high-energy neutrino production, and are not favorable for ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray acceleration. Alternatively, the challenges we identify in generating a significant rate of IceCube neutrino detections from TXS 0506+056 may disfavor single-zone models. In concert with continued operations of the high-energy neutrino observatories, we advocate regular X-ray monitoring of TXS 0506+056 and other blazars in order to test single-zone blazar emission models, clarify the nature and extent of their hadronic acceleration processes, and carry out the most sensitive possible search for additional multimessenger sources.