arXiv · 1502.02357
Effects of axions on Nucleosynthesis in massive stars
Abstract
We investigate the effect of the axion cooling on the nucleosynthesis in a massive star with $16M_{\odot}$ by standard stellar evolution calculation. We find that the axion cooling suppresses the nuclear reactions in carbon, oxygen and silicon burning phases because of the extraction of the energy. As a result, larger amounts of the already synthesized neon and magnesium remain without being consumed to produce further heavier elements. Even in the case with the axion-photon coupling constant $g_{a\gamma}= 10^{-11}$ GeV$^{-1}$, which is six times smaller than the current upper limit, the amount of neon and magnesium that remain just before the core-collapse supernova explosion is considerably larger than the standard value. This implies that we could give a more stringent constraint on $g_{a\gamma}$ from the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in massive stars.
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Shohei Aoyama, Takeru K. Suzuki. 2015-02-09. Effects of axions on Nucleosynthesis in massive stars. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.92.063016
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