TeV neutrinos and hard X-rays from relativistic reconnection in the corona of NGC 1068

Understand

The recent discovery of astrophysical neutrinos from the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068 suggests the presence of non-thermal protons within a compact "coronal" region close to the central black hole.

• The acceleration mechanism of these non-thermal protons remains elusive.
• We show that a large-scale magnetic reconnection layer, of the order of a few gravitational radii, may provide such a mechanism.
• In such a scenario, rough energy equipartition between magnetic fields, X-ray photons, and non-thermal protons is established in the reconnection region.