First indirect detection constraints on axions in the Solar basin

Abstract

Axions with masses of order keV can be produced in great abundance within the Solar core. The majority of Sun-produced axions escape to infinity, but a small fraction of the flux is produced with speeds below the escape velocity. Over time, this process populates a basin of slow-moving axions trapped on bound orbits. These axions can decay to two photons, yielding an observable signature. We place the first limits on this solar basin of axions using recent quiescent solar observations made by the NuSTAR X-ray telescope. We compare three different methodologies for setting constraints, and obtain world-leading limits for axions with masses between 5 and 30 keV, in some cases improving on stellar cooling bounds by more than an order of magnitude in coupling.

arXiv comment15 pages, 15 figures

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• The Irreducible Axion Background
• Axion Couplings in Grand Unified Theories
• Superradiant axion clouds around asteroid-mass primordial black holes
• Searching for Ultralight Dark Matter Conversion in Solar Corona using Low Frequency Array Data
• Detecting Axion-Like Particles with Primordial Black Holes
• Probing high-energy solar axion flux with a large scintillation neutrino detector