New feebly interacting particles would emerge from a supernova core with 100-MeV-range energies and produce γ-rays by subsequent decays. These would contribute to the diffuse cosmic γ-ray background or would have shown up in the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) satellite from SN~1987A. However, we show for the example of axion-like particles (ALPs) that, even at distances beyond the progenitor star, the decay photons may not escape, and can instead form a fireball, a plasma shell with T≲1 MeV. Thus, existing arguments do not exclude ALPs with few 10 MeV masses and a two-photon coupling of a few 10−10GeV−1. However, the energy would have showed up in sub-MeV photons, which were not seen from SN 1987A in the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO), closing again this new window. A careful re-assessment is required for other particles that were constrained in similar ways.
@article{arxiv.2303.11395,
title = {Axion-sourced fireballs from supernovae},
author = {Melissa Diamond and Damiano F. G. Fiorillo and Gustavo Marques-Tavares and Edoardo Vitagliano},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.11395},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
12 pages, 7 figures. Corrected spectrum for the photons, according to Erratum submitted to Phys. Rev. D. Conclusions are unchanged