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511 keV line constraints on feebly interacting particles from supernovae

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2022-03-31 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Feebly interacting particles with masses with O(10-100) MeV can be copiously produced by core-collapse supernovae (SNe). In this paper we consider the case of MeV-ish sterile neutrinos and dark photons mixed with ordinary neutrinos and photons, respectively. Furthermore, both sterile neutrinos and dark photons may decay into positrons on their route to Earth. Such positrons would annihilate with electrons in the Galactic medium and contribute to the photon flux in the 511 keV line. Using the SPI (SPectrometer on INTEGRAL) observation of this line improves the bounds on the mixing parameters for these particles by several orders of magnitude below what is already excluded by the SN 1987A energy-loss argument.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.08382,
  title  = {511 keV line constraints on feebly interacting particles from supernovae},
  author = {Francesca Calore and Pierluca Carenza and Maurizio Giannotti and Joerg Jaeckel and Giuseppe Lucente and Leonardo Mastrototaro and Alessandro Mirizzi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.08382},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

17 pages, 9 figures. Minor changes to match the version published on PRD