Constraining spacetime variations of nuclear decay rates from light curves of type Ia supernovae

Abstract

The luminosity of fading type Ia supernovae is governed by radioactive decays of 56Ni and 56Co. The decay rates are proportional to the Fermi coupling constant G_F and, therefore, are determined by the vacuum expectation value v of the Brout-Englert-Higgs field. We use publicly available sets of light curves of type Ia supernova at various redshifts to constrain possible spacetime variations of the 56Ni decay rate. The resulting constraint is not very tight; however, it is the only direct bound on the variation of the decay rate for redshifts up to z~1. We discuss potential applications of the result to searches for non-constancy of G_F and v.