Solar chameleons: Novel channels

O’Shea, Tomás (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Davis, Anne-Christine ; Giannotti, Maurizio (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Vagnozzi, Sunny ; Visinelli, Luca ; Vogel, Julia K.

Resumen: We revisit the flux of chameleons (light scalar particles which could play a role in the dark energy phenomenon) produced in the interior of the Sun. Our novel analysis incorporates various important details and new processes that have previously been overlooked, including the impact of the bulk magnetic field profile, as well as Primakoff production of chameleons in the electric fields of electrons and ions. In this paper we consider only the contributions of transverse photons. The production of chameleons from longitudinal electromagnetic excitations will be presented in a dedicated follow-up work. Demanding that the total flux of chameleons does not exceed 3% of the solar luminosity leads to the stringent upper limit on the chameleon-photon conformal coupling βγ≲1010, assuming that the height of the chameleon potential is set to the dark energy scale Λ=2.4  meV, and independently of other couplings to matter. Although this bound is tighter than current upper limits on βγ from the CAST helioscope, these limits will have to be reassessed in terms of the updated solar chameleon flux we have computed. We argue that solar chameleons, potentially detectable in next-generation helioscopes such as IAXO, can be used to probe a region of chameleon parameter space that has yet to be covered.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.110.063027

Año: 2024

Publicado en: Physical Review D 110, 6 (2024), 063027 [17 pp.]
ISSN: 2470-0010

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/E21-23R
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/788781/EU/Towards the detection of the axion with the International Axion Observatory/IAXOplus
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PGC2022-126078NB-C21
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PID2019-108122GB-C31

Tipo y forma: Artículo (Versión definitiva)

Área (Departamento): Área Astronomía y Astrofísica (Dpto. Física Teórica)
Área (Departamento): Área Física Atóm.Molec.y Nucl. (Dpto. Física Teórica)