Cometary Knots and Broad Emission Lines, Gamma Rays And Neutrinos From AGN

Arnon Dar

Published 1997-08-18Version 1

Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered in the nearest planetary nebula, the Helix Nebula, thousands of gigantic comet-like objects with planet like masses in a ring around the central brilliant star at a distance comparable to our own Oort cloud of comets. We propose that such circumstellar rings of planets exist around most stars and that the gas clouds which emit the broad optical lines from quasars are radiation ablated planets which have been stripped off by gravitational collisions from stars that orbit near the central massive black hole. We propose that collisions of jet accelerated particles with these targets crossing the line of sight produce TeV $\gamma$-ray flares (GRFs) from blazars like Markarian 421 and Markarian 501. Hadronic production of TeV GRFs from blazars implies that they are accompanied by a simultaneous emission of high energy neutrinos, and of electrons and positrons with similar intensities, light curves and energy spectra. Cooling of these electrons and positrons by emission of synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering produces $\gamma$-ray, X-ray, optical and radio afterglows.