Scalar boson emission from a magnetized relativistic plasma

Abstract

We investigate the differential emission rate of neutral scalar bosons from a highly magnetized relativistic plasma. We show that three processes contribute at the leading order: particle splitting ($\psi\rightarrow \psi+\phi $), antiparticle splitting ($\bar{\psi} \rightarrow \bar{\psi}+\phi $), and particle-antiparticle annihilation ($\psi + \bar{\psi}\rightarrow \phi $). This is in contrast to the scenario with zero magnetic field, where only the annihilation processes contribute to boson production. We examine the impact of Landau-level quantization on the energy dependence of the rate and investigate the angular distribution of emitted scalar bosons. The differential rate resulting from both (anti)particle splitting and annihilation processes are typically suppressed in the direction of the magnetic field and enhanced in perpendicular directions. Overall, the background magnetic field significantly amplifies the total emission rate. We speculate that our model calculations provide valuable theoretical insights with potentially important applications.