Probing New Physics with Supernovae
- Claudio Manzari, University of California, Berkeley
It is well known that the study and observation of core collapse Supernovae (SN) provide powerful tools to probe possible scenarios of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). After reviewing the basics beyond the mechanism of a SN explosion and how these observations can constraint models of new physics, I will focus on two novel ideas to exploit the already available data from past SN and the observation of a future, long due, galactic one. Firstly. I will discuss constraints, from the cooling on the SN, on the interactions of SM particles with an hypothetical dark sector, leading to bounds on the mediators of such interactions competitive with collider ones. Then, I will turn on the constrains on the emission of axion-like particles (ALPs) that can convert into photons in an external magnetic field, leading to a gamma-ray signal. I will discuss the possibility that ALPs can convert to gamma-rays in the stellar magnetic fields of the progenitor stars. Applying this concept to gamma-ray data from SN1987A leads to the strongest constraints on axion-like particles for masses within a few orders of magnitude of 10^-5 eV. The implications for a future galactic blue supergiant supernova will be discussed.
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