Recurrent Neutrino Emission from Supermassive Black Hole Mergers

Understand

The recent detection of possible neutrino emission from the blazar TXS 0506+056 was the first high-energy neutrino associated with an astrophysical source, making this special type of active galaxies promising neutrino emitters.

• The fact that two distinct episodes of neutrino emission were detected with a separation of around 3 years suggests that emission could be periodic.
• Periodic emission is expected from supermassive binary black hole systems due to jet precession close to the binary's merger.
• Here we show that if TXS 0506+056 is a binary source then the next neutrino flare could occur before the end of 2021.