Abstract
We examine the constraints on sub-GeV dark sector particles set by the proto-neutron star cooling associated with the core-collapse supernova event SN1987a. Considering explicitly a dark photon portal dark sector model, we compute the relevant interaction rates of dark photon ($A'$) and dark fermion ($\chi$) with the Standard Model particles as well as their self-interaction inside the dark sector. We find that even with a small dark sector fine structure constant $\alpha_D\ll 1$, dark sector self-interactions can easily lead to their own self-trapping. This effect strongly limits the energy luminosity carried away by dark sector particles from the supernova core and thus drastically affects the parameter space that can be constrained by SN1987a. We consider specifically two mass ratios $m_{A'}=3m_\chi$ and $3m_{A'}=m_\chi$ which represent scenarios where the decay of $A'$ to $\chi\bar\chi$ is allowed or not. We show that SN1987a can only place bounds on the dark sector when $\alpha_D\lesssim 10^{-15}$ ($10^{-7}$) for the former (latter) for $m_\chi\lesssim 20$ MeV. Furthermore, this evades the supernova bounds on the widely-examined dark photon parameter space completely if $\alpha_D\lesssim 10^{-7}$ for the former, while lifts the bounds when $\alpha_D\lesssim 10^{-7}$ if $m_\chi\lesssim 100$ MeV. Our findings thus imply that the existing supernova bounds on light dark particles can be generally evaded by a similar self-trapping mechanism. This also implies that non-standard strongly self-interacting neutrino is not consistent with the SN1987a observation. Same effects can also take place for other known stellar bounds on dark sector particles.
Highlights
The detection of 20 electron antineutrinos emitted from the core-collapse supernova (SN) explosion event, SN1987a [1,2,3], broadly confirmed the prevalent SN theory, and led to several important consequences to fundamental physics, including, e.g., bounds on the neutrino decay lifetime, the absolute masses of neutrinos, and nonstandard neutrino interactions [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
II, we describe the underlying dark photon portal dark sector model, the considered SN model, and list the relevant interactions and decay processes that we included in this work
We examined the SN bounds on selfinteracting dark sector particles
Summary
The detection of 20 electron antineutrinos emitted from the core-collapse supernova (SN) explosion event, SN1987a [1,2,3], broadly confirmed the prevalent SN theory, and led to several important consequences to fundamental physics, including, e.g., bounds on the neutrino decay lifetime, the absolute masses of neutrinos, and nonstandard neutrino interactions [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Instead of directly pursuing full numerical simulations, we adopt an approximated approach to estimate the energy fluxes carried by dark photons and dark fermions evaluated in the nondiffuse regime and diffuse regime separately, and formulate a physically motivated criterion to switch from one regime to another This approach allows us to estimate the effect of dark sector self-trapping on SN bounds for a wide range of parameter space, which turns out to be very important even for small couplings in the dark sector. III, we compute the energy luminosity of dark sector particles leaving the PNS in the nondiffuse and the diffuse regime, respectively, and formulate the criterion to switch from one regime to another We adopt natural units with ħ 1⁄4 c 1⁄4 1 throughout the paper unless explicitly specified
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