Muons in Supernovae: Implications for the Axion-Muon Coupling

Abstract

The high temperature and electron degeneracy attained during a supernova allow for the formation of a large muon abundance within the core of the resulting protoneutron star. If new pseudoscalar degrees of freedom have large couplings to the muon, they can be produced by this muon abundance and contribute to the cooling of the star. By generating the largest collection of supernova simulations with muons to date, we show that observations of the cooling rate of SN 1987A place strong constraints on the coupling of axionlike particles to muons, limiting the coupling to g_{aμ}<10^{-8.1} GeV^{-1}.