Improved stellar limits on a light CP-even scalar

Shyam Balaji, P. S. Bhupal Dev, Joseph Silk, Yongchao Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

We derive improved stellar luminosity limits on a generic light CP-even scalar field S mixing with the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson from the supernova SN1987A, the Sun, red giants (RGs) and white dwarfs (WDs). For the first time, we include the geometric effects for the decay and absorption of S particles in the stellar interior. For SN1987A and the Sun, we also take into account the detailed stellar profiles. We find that a broad range of the scalar mass and mixing angle can be excluded by our updated astrophysical constraints. For instance, SN1987A excludes 1.0 × 10-7 ≲ sinθ ≲ 3.0 × 10-5 and scalar mass up to 219 MeV, which covers the cosmological blind spot with a high reheating temperature. The updated solar limit excludes the mixing angle in the range of 1.5 × 10-12 < sinθ < 1, with scalar mass up to 45 keV. The RG and WD limits are updated to 5.3 × 10-13 < sinθ < 0.39 and 2.8 × 10-18 < sinθ < 1.8 × 10-4, with scalar mass up to 392 keV and 290 keV, respectively.

Original languageEnglish
Article number024
JournalJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Volume2022
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2022

Keywords

  • core-collapse supernovae
  • particle physics - cosmology connection
  • white and brown dwarfs

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