Can Quasi-periodic Eruptions Produce Detectable High Energy Neutrinos?

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are a class of X-ray flaring phenomena that occur at the centers of galactic nuclei and are likely to arise from repeated interactions between a star and an accretion disk. This work investigates whether such disk-crossing events can accelerate protons and generate detectable high-energy neutrinos. Based on observed QPE luminosities, recurrence periods, and flare durations, the stellar motion parameters and the disk properties are evaluated. We consider proton acceleration during the breakout phase and evaluate neutrino production, accounting for both $pp$ and $pγ$ interactions. Applying the method to ten observed QPE sources, we estimate the neutrino fluence accumulated over a 10-year observation period and compute the corresponding detection numbers for IceCube and IceCube-Gen2. Our analysis indicates that protons can be accelerated up to several tens of TeV, and neutrino production is mostly confined below $\sim 10~\mathrm{TeV}$. The resulting optimized neutrino fluence spans from $ 7.0 \times 10^{-7} $ to $1.5 \times 10^{-4}~\mathrm{GeV~cm^{-2}}$ for these ten QPE sources. We find that the expected neutrino detection number for a single QPE source is low, and the expected neutrino detection number would approach unity only for the most promising QPE source occurring at a distance closer than a few Mpc. Next-generation neutrino telescopes with better detection sensitivities at $\lesssim \rm TeV$ can significantly improve the capture capacity of the cumulative neutrino signal from the QPE population.