Seyfert Galaxies as Neutrino Sources: An Outflow$-$Cloud Interaction Perspective

Abstract

Following the identification of the first confirmed individual neutrino source, Seyfert galaxies have emerged as the most prominent class of high-energy neutrino emitters. In this work, we perform a detailed investigation of the outflow--cloud interaction scenario for neutrino production in Seyfert nuclei. In this framework, fast AGN-driven winds collide with clumpy gas clouds in the nuclear region, forming bow shocks that efficiently accelerate cosmic-ray protons. The accelerated protons subsequently interact with cold protons from the outflows via inelastic proton--proton ($pp$) collisions, producing high-energy neutrinos, while the photomeson ($p\gamma$) process with disk photons may provide a subdominant contribution at the highest energies. Applying this model to five neutrino-associated Seyfert galaxies, we successfully reproduce the observed TeV neutrino fluxes without violating existing gamma-ray constraints. By integrating over the Seyfert population using X-ray luminosity functions, we further demonstrate that Seyfert galaxies can account for a substantial fraction of the diffuse astrophysical neutrino background in the $10^4-10^5~{\rm GeV}$ energy range.