Exploring Cosmic Rays from Gravity-Limited Acceleration at Supermassive Black Holes

arXiv:2610.23393 · astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.GA · Submitted 2026-10-16 · Read on arXiv

astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.GA

Submitted: 2026-10-16

Updated: 2026-10-16

Comments: Accepted for publication in PRL

DOI: 10.1103/8p34-jczv

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: We show that horizon-scale magnetic fields around supermassive black holes (SMBHs), only limited by gravity, yield a universal, model-independent ceiling on electromagnetic energy density.

Abstract

We show that horizon-scale magnetic fields around supermassive black holes (SMBHs), only limited by gravity, yield a universal, model-independent ceiling on electromagnetic energy density. For rotating SMBHs, this field enables particle acceleration up to about!10 27,eV set solely by fundamental constants. We identify a parameter space in accretion rate and magnetic field strength in which quiescent nuclei simultaneously satisfy the transparency conditions for Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) escape and the field requirements for reaching Ultra-High Energies (UHE), naturally complementing photon-rich Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), which favor neutrino production but suppress UHECR escape. We observe that, when including curvature energy losses, the energy of the primaries scales weakly as E curv! proportional to!M 1/4 and allows to achieve UHE across different compositions and SMBHs masses (10 6 -- 10 10,M), without requiring extreme spins or super-Eddington accretion. A cross-correlation of the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) public data with galaxies hosting reliably measured SMBH masses, separating AGN from quiescent hosts, reveals marginal local excesses (!2.8σ) consistent with isotropy after correcting for the look-elsewhere effect. The framework provides a direct link between black-hole physics and the maximum energies of cosmic particles, and defines concrete observational tests for next-generation UHECR datasets.

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