Stellar cooling limits on light scalar boson revisited

Abstract

We revisit the stellar cooling limits on the light scalar boson whose coupling to the Standard Model particles is described by its mixing with the Higgs boson. Strong constraints have been obtained from the electron-nucleus bremsstrahlung process (Ne→NeS) and the resonant plasma effect in the medium. We find that the bremsstrahlung contribution from the electron and nucleus scattering is of similar magnitude to the plasma mixing effect including the off-resonant mixing. The constraints on the scalar coupling are found to be about three orders of magnitude weaker than the previous evaluations because of the missing factor of the electron-nucleon mass ratio. For white dwarfs, the stellar cooling constraint is even more suppressed due to the Pauli blocking effect. We obtain limits on the Higgs-scalar mixing angle of 10−10–10−9, which are given by white dwarfs or red giants up to the luminosity limits, in the region where the scalar mass is lighter than about 10 keV.