Strong supernovae bounds on ALPs from quantum loops

Abstract

We show that in theories of axionlike particles (ALPs) coupled to electrons at tree-level, the one-loop effective coupling to photons is process dependent: the effective coupling relevant for decay processes, $g_{a\gamma }^{\text{(D)}}$, differs significantly from the coupling appearing in the phenomenologically important Primakoff process, $g_{a\gamma }^{\text{(P)}}$. We show that this has important implications for the physics of massive ALPs in hot and dense environments, such as supernovae. We derive, as a consequence, new limits on the ALP-electron coupling, ${\hat{g}}_{ae}$, from SN 1987A by accounting for all relevant production processes, including one-loop processes, and considering bounds from excess cooling as well as the absence of an associated gamma-ray burst from ALP decays. Our limits are among the strongest to date for ALP masses in the range $0.03\text{MeV}<m_a<240\text{MeV}$. Moreover, we also show how cosmological bounds on the ALP-photon coupling translate into new, strong limits on ${\hat{g}}_{ae}$ at one loop. Our analysis emphasises that large hierarchies between ALP effective couplings are difficult to realise once quantum loops are taken into account.

36 pages, 10 figures. Changes in v2: gravitational redshift taken into account, small corrections. This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in JCAP. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it

References in corpus (4)

• Collider Probes of Axion-Like Particles
• Revisiting the SN1987A gamma-ray limit on ultralight axion-like particles
• Discovering New Light States at Neutrino Experiments
• Radiative transfer in stars by feebly interacting bosons

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Astrophysical Axion Bounds: The 2024 Edition
• Updated constraints on axion-like particles from temporal information in supernova SN1987A gamma-ray data
• Axion-sourced fireballs from supernovae
• Strong Supernova 1987A Constraints on Bosons Decaying to Neutrinos
• Supernova Simulations Confront SN 1987A Neutrinos
• Proto-neutron stars as cosmic factories for massive axion-like-particles
• Axion Astrophysics
• Investigating the gamma-ray burst from decaying MeV-scale axion-like particles produced in supernova explosions
• Primordial black hole dark matter from catastrogenesis with unstable pseudo-Goldstone bosons
• First Constraints on the Photon Coupling of Axion-like Particles from Multimessenger Studies of the Neutron Star Merger GW170817
• Reinterpretation of searches for long-lived particles from meson decays
• GRB 221009A: A light dark matter burst or an extremely bright Inverse Compton component?
• Physical Signatures of Fermion-Coupled Axion Dark Matter
• Leading bounds on micro- to picometer fifth forces from neutron star cooling
• NuSTAR bounds on radiatively decaying particles from M82
• Limits on ALP-neutrino couplings from loop-level processes
• Sub-GeV dark matter and nano-Hertz gravitational waves from a classically conformal dark sector
• In-flight positron annihilation as a probe of feebly interacting particles
• Probing a diffuse flux of axion-like particles from galactic supernovae with neutrino water Cherenkov detectors
• New Constraints on Axion-Like Particles with the NEON Detector at a Nuclear Reactor
• Improved constraints for axion-like particles from 3-photon events at $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ colliders
• Inverse Primakoff Scattering for Axionlike Particle Coupling
• Prospects for detecting the couplings of axion-like particle with neutrinos at the CEPC
• CMB Constraints on Loop-Induced Decays of Leptophilic Dark Matter
• INTEGRAL, eROSITA and Voyager Constraints on Light Bosonic Dark Matter: ALPs, Dark Photons, Scalars, $B-L$ and $L_i-L_j$ Vectors
• Loop-Level Lepton Flavor Violation and Diphoton Signals in the Minimal Left-Right Symmetric Model