Supernovae and Weinberg’s Higgs portal dark radiation and dark matter

Abstract

The observed burst duration and energies of the neutrinos from Supernova 1987A strongly limit the possibility of any weakly-interacting light particle species being produced in the proto-neutron star (PNS) core and leading to efficient energy loss. We reexamine this constraint on Weinberg's Higgs portal model, in which the dark radiation particles (the Goldstone bosons) and the dark matter candidate (a Majorana fermion) interact with Standard Model (SM) fields solely through the mixing of the SM Higgs boson and a light Higgs boson. In order for the Goldstone bosons to freely stream out of the PNS core region, the Higgs portal coupling has to be about a factor of 4-9 smaller than the current collider bound inferred from the SM Higgs invisible decay width. We find that in the energy loss rate calculations, results obtained by using the one-pion exchange (OPE) approximation and the SP07 global fits for the nucleon-nucleon total elastic cross section differ only by a factor 3. The SN 1987A constraints surpass those set by laboratory experiments or by the energy loss arguments in other astrophysical objects such as the gamma-ray bursts, even with other nuclear uncertainties taken into account. Furthermore, the SN 1987A constraints are comparable to bounds from the latest dark matter direct search for low-mass WIMPs ( 10 GeV.)

Probing light dark scalars with future experiments

“…Therefore, there is an optimal range of couplings between the dark particles and the SM that can be tested with this argument, for which the dark states are abundantly produced, and they efficiently escape from the supernova. The observed cooling time of the supernova 1987A has been used to set bounds on the pair production of light DM [57,[103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113]. Ref.…”

Light dark sectors through the Fermion portal

“…refs. [19,[86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104]). Typically, the bound arises from the requirement that the energy loss from a star to new light states should not exceed the energy loss to neutrinos.…”

Light Dark Sectors through the Fermion Portal

“…Refs. [18,[83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]). If new light particles exist and can be produced in a star or supernova, there exist two typical regimes bracketing the bounds.…”