Observations of the spectacular, blazar-like tidal disruption event (TDE) candidates Swift J1644+57 and J2058+05 show that the conditions required for accelerating protons to 10^{20} eV appear to be realized in the outer jet, and possibly in the inner jet as well. Direct and indirect estimates of the rate of jetted-TDEs, and of the energy they inject, are compatible with the observed flux of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and the abundance of presently contributing sources. Thus TDE-jets can be a major source of UHECRs, even compabile with a pure proton composition.
@article{arxiv.1411.0704,
title = {Tidal disruption jets as the source of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays},
author = {Glennys R. Farrar and Tsvi Piran},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.0704},
year = {2014}
}