Common envelope jets supernovae with a black hole companion as possible high energy neutrino sources

TL;DR

This paper proposes that common envelope jets supernovae involving a black hole inside a red supergiant can produce high energy neutrinos detectable by IceCube, due to jet-driven cosmic ray acceleration within the stellar envelope.

Contribution

It introduces a new astrophysical scenario where black hole-induced jets in common envelope events generate high energy neutrinos, explaining IceCube observations.

Findings

Jets inflate the stellar envelope, preventing jet escape.

Jets accelerate cosmic rays to produce high energy neutrinos.

The scenario accounts for neutrino detection without gamma-ray counterparts.

Abstract

We study high energy neutrino emission from relativistic jets launched by a black hole (BH) spiraling-in inside the envelope of a red supergiant (RSG), and find that such common envelope jets supernovae (CEJSNe) are a potential source for the ~10^15 eV neutrinos detected by IceCube. We first use the stellar evolution code MESA to mimic the effect of the jets on the RSG envelope, and find that the jets substantially inflate the envelope. We then study the propagation of jets inside the extended RSG envelope and find that in most cases the jets do not penetrate the envelope but are rather stalled. We show that such jets can accelerate cosmic rays to high enough energies to produce high energy neutrinos. While the neutrinos stream out freely, the gamma-rays that accompany the neutrino production remain trapped inside the optically thick envelope. This explains the lack of observational association between high energy neutrinos and gamma-rays. We crudely estimate the diffuse neutrino spectrum from a CEJSN and find that CEJSNe with BH companions might have a substantial contribution to the high energy neutrinos flux detected by IceCube.