Speaker
Takuya Okawa
(Washington University in St. Louis)
Description
Hot plasma in astrophysical objects provides an ideal place for the production of heavy axion-like particles (ALPs). We show that a fraction of these ALPs could stream out of the photosphere and subsequently decay into two photons that can be potentially detected on or near the Earth. In particular, we estimate the photon flux originating from the spontaneous decay of heavy ALPs produced inside Horizontal Branch stars, Wolf-Rayet stars, and fireballs associated with gamma-ray bursts. Then, we assess its detectability by current/future X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes.
Author
Takuya Okawa
(Washington University in St. Louis)
Co-authors
Bhupal Dev
(Washington University in St. Louis)
Christopher Cappiello
Francesc Ferrer
(Washington University in St. Louis)
James Buckley
(Washington University in St. Louis)
Saurav Das
