Hadronic High-energy Emission from Magnetically Arrested Disks in Radio Galaxies

We propose a novel interpretation that gamma rays from nearby radio galaxies are hadronic emission from magnetically arrested disks (MADs) around central black holes (BHs). The magnetic energy in MADs is higher than the thermal energy of the accreting plasma, where the magnetic reconnection or turbulence may efficiently accelerate nonthermal protons. They emit gamma rays via hadronic processes, which can account for the observed gamma rays for M87 and NGC 315. Nonthermal electrons are also accelerated with protons and produce MeV gamma rays, which is useful to test our model by proposed MeV satellites. The hadronic emission from the MADs may significantly contribute to the GeV gamma-ray background and produce the multi-PeV neutrino background detectable by IceCube-Gen2. In addition, gamma rays from MADs provide electron–positron pairs through two-photon pair production at the BH magnetosphere. These pairs can screen the vacuum gap, which affects high-energy emission and jet-launching mechanisms in radio galaxies.