Bhusal Aagaman, Houston Nick, Li Tianjun
CAS Key Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
Phys Rev Lett. 2021 Mar 5;126(9):091601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.091601.
We explore a novel detection possibility for solar axions, which relies only on their couplings to nucleons, via the axion-induced dissociation of deuterons into their constituent neutrons and protons. An opportune target for this process is the now-concluded Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment, which relied upon large quantities of heavy water to resolve the solar neutrino problem. From the full SNO dataset we exclude in a model-independent fashion isovector axion-nucleon couplings |g_{aN}^{3}|≡1/2|g_{an}-g_{ap}|>2×10^{-5} GeV^{-1} at 95% C.L. for sub-MeV axion masses, covering previously unexplored regions of the axion parameter space. In the absence of a precise cancellation between g_{an} and g_{ap} this result also exceeds comparable constraints from other laboratory experiments, and excludes regions of the parameter space for which astrophysical constraints from SN1987A and neutron star cooling are inapplicable due to axion trapping.
我们探索了一种探测太阳轴子的新方法，该方法仅依赖于轴子与核子的耦合，通过轴子诱导氘核分解为其组成的中子和质子来实现。这一过程的一个合适目标是现已结束的萨德伯里中微子观测站（SNO）实验，该实验依靠大量重水来解决太阳中微子问题。从完整的SNO数据集中，我们以与模型无关的方式排除了亚兆电子伏轴子质量下同位旋轴子 - 核子耦合|g_{aN}^{3}|≡1/2|g_{an}-g_{ap}|>2×10^{-5} GeV^{-1}，置信水平为95%，涵盖了轴子参数空间中以前未探索的区域。在g_{an}和g_{ap}之间不存在精确抵消的情况下，这一结果也超过了其他实验室实验的可比约束，并排除了由于轴子捕获而使来自1987A超新星和中子星冷却的天体物理约束不适用的参数空间区域。
