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
Additional Information
We thank Iain Hannah, Crystal Kim, and David Smith for discussion regarding NuSTAR data products and instrumental response. We are grateful to Robert Lasenby for sharing preliminary results upon which the production computation in the Supplemental Material [31] is based, as well as many clarifying discussions and comments on the draft. We thank Asimina Arvanitaki and Matthew Johnson for comments on the draft, and Andrea Caputo, Joshua Foster, Cristina Mondino, Benjamin Safdi, Edoardo Vitagliano, and Huacheng Yu for useful conversations. W. D. is supported by the U.S Department of Energy, Grant No. DE-SC0010107. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported in part by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. The Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 117032
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220916-666142000
- DE-SC0010107
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (Canada)
- Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities
- Simons Foundation
- Created
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2022-10-21Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-10-24Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Space Radiation Laboratory