1. Axion-like Particles from Hypernovae
- Author
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Edoardo Vitagliano, Giuseppe Lucente, Andrea Caputo, Pierluca Carenza, Kei Kotake, Takami Kuroda, Alessandro Mirizzi, and Maurizio Giannotti
- Subjects
Physics ,High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) ,Photon ,Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,General Physics and Astronomy ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astrophysics ,Parameter space ,Magnetic field ,Supernova ,High Energy Physics - Phenomenology ,High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) ,Orders of magnitude (time) ,Thermal ,Magnetohydrodynamics ,Hypernova ,Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena - Abstract
It was recently pointed out that very energetic subclasses of supernovae (SNe), like hypernovae and superluminous SNe, might host ultra-strong magnetic fields in their core. Such fields may catalyze the production of feebly interacting particles, changing the predicted emission rates. Here we consider the case of axion-like particles (ALPs) and show that the predicted large scale magnetic fields in the core contribute significantly to the ALP production, via a coherent conversion of thermal photons. Using recent state-of-the-art SN simulations including magnetohydrodynamics, we find that if ALPs have masses $m_a \sim {\mathcal O}(10)\, \rm MeV$, their emissivity via magnetic conversions is over two orders of magnitude larger than previously estimated. Moreover, the radiative decay of these massive ALPs would lead to a peculiar delay in the arrival times of the daughter photons. Therefore, high-statistics gamma-ray satellites can potentially discover MeV ALPs in an unprobed region of the parameter space and shed light on the magnetohydrodinamical nature of the SN explosion., 6 pages, 3 Figures
- Published
- 2021