The Blazar TXS 0506+056 Associated with a High-energy Neutrino: Insights into Extragalactic Jets and Cosmic-Ray Acceleration

Abstract

A neutrino with energy similar to 290 TeV, IceCube-170922A, was detected in coincidence with the BL Lac object TXS. 0506+056 during enhanced gamma-ray activity, with chance coincidence being rejected at similar to 3 sigma level. We monitored the object in the very-high-energy (VHE) band with the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes for similar to 41 hr from 1.3 to 40.4 days after the neutrino detection. Day-timescale variability is clearly resolved. We interpret the quasi-simultaneous neutrino and broadband electromagnetic observations with a novel one-zone lepto-hadronic model, based on interactions of electrons and protons co-accelerated in the jet with external photons originating from a slow-moving plasma sheath surrounding the faster jet spine. We can reproduce the multiwavelength spectra of TXS 0506+056 with neutrino rate and energy compatible with IceCube-170922A, and with plausible values for the jet power of similar to 10(45) - 4 x 10(46) erg s(-1). The steep spectrum observed by MAGIC is concordant with internal gamma gamma absorption above similar to 100 GeV entailed by photohadronic production of a similar to 290 TeV neutrino, corroborating a genuine connection between the multi-messenger signals. In contrast to previous predictions of predominantly hadronic emission from neutrino sources, the gamma-rays can be mostly ascribed to inverse Compton upscattering of external photons by accelerated electrons. The X-ray and VHE bands provide crucial constraints on the emission from both accelerated electrons and protons. We infer that the maximum energy of protons in the jet comoving frame can be in the range similar to 10(14) - 10(18) eV.