Speaker
Description
Blazars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGN), the brightest continuously emitting sources in the Universe, powered by accreting supermassive black holes (SMBH). Their defining characteristic is the presence of powerful, back-to-back relativistic jets of protons and electrons, with one jet closely aligned in the direction of Earth. This offers a unique opportunity to probe physics Beyond the Standard Model. The jet can in fact interact with the surrounding Dark Matter in the host galaxy’s halo, offering compelling direct and indirect detection prospects. We present, for the first time, a self-consistent implementation of Dark Matter-proton interactions into a dedicated astrophysical code to quantify this effect. A key signatures of this interaction is the production of high-energy neutrinos and gamma-rays as secondary products of the proton disintegrating in the collision, which can significantly alter the observed spectra of these objects for a large part of unexplored light Dark Matter parameter space. We discuss the reach of this effect and the extent to which it can contribute to the observed astrophysical neutrino flux.
