White dwarfs as physics laboratories: the case of axions

Abstract

White dwarfs are almost completely degenerate objects that cannot obtain energy from thermonuclear sources, so their evolution is just a gravothermal cooling process. Recent improvements in the accuracy and precision of the luminosity function and in pulsational data of variable white dwarfs suggest that they are cooling faster than expected from conventional theory. In this contribution we show that the inclusion of an additional cooling term due to axions able to interact with electrons with a coupling constant g_ae ~(2-7)x10^{-13} allows to fit better the observations.

arXiv comment4 pages, 1 figure. Proceedings for the 7th Patras Workshop on Axions, WIMPs and WISPs (PATRAS 2011), Mykonos, Greece, June 27 - July 1, 2011

References in corpus (4)

• The White Dwarf Luminosity Function from SDSS Imaging Data
• Axions and the cooling of white dwarf stars
• A large stellar evolution database for population synthesis studies: VI. White dwarf cooling sequences
• Axions and the pulsation periods of variable white dwarfs revisited

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• Anomaly-free flavor models for Nambu-Goldstone bosons and the 3.5 keV X-ray line signal
• A Family of WISPy Dark Matter Candidates
• Exploring the Role of Axions and Other WISPs in the Dark Universe
• Axion-like Particles from String Compactifications