English

Long-Lived Particles and the Quiet Sun

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2024-08-09 v3 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Nuclear Theory

Abstract

The nuclear reaction network within the interior of the Sun is an efficient MeV physics factory, and can produce long-lived particles generic to dark sector models. In this work we consider the sensitivity of satellite instruments, primarily the RHESSI Spectrometer, that observe the Quiet Sun in the MeV regime where backgrounds are low. We find that Quiet Sun observations offer a powerful and complementary probe in regions of parameter space where the long-lived particle decay length is longer than the radius of the Sun, and shorter than the distance between the Sun and Earth. We comment on connections to recent model-building work on heavy neutral leptons coupled to neutrinos and high-quality axions from mirror symmetries.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.01856,
  title  = {Long-Lived Particles and the Quiet Sun},
  author = {R. Andrew Gustafson and Ryan Plestid and Ian M. Shoemaker and Albert Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.01856},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

12 pages, 8 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:22:06.820Z