Speaker
Description
The diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux was first detected by IceCube in
2013. With the high-probability association of a high-energy neutrino to the
blazar TXS0506+056 in 2017 and several more neutrino-blazar associations
since then, there is an indication that at least a non-negligible part of this
diffuse neutrino flux originates from blazars.
As over ninety stellar mass binary black hole mergers were already detected
via gravitational waves, with more to come, there are strong indications that
supermassive black holes in galaxy centers, and thus blazars, also merge and
have undergone at least one merger in their lifetime. Such a merger is almost
always accompanied by a change of observable jet direction, leading to interactions
of a preceding jet with surrounding molecular clouds and therefore
neutrino productions.
By creating a connection between the emitted energy in form of neutrinos
and gravitational waves in each merger of binary supermassive and stellar
mass black holes, we estimate their contributions to the diffuse neutrino flux
that is measured by IceCube. As neutrino production is directly connected to
high energy cosmic ray interactions, the contribution of these sources to the
injection rate of cosmic rays is established.
