Photo-production of axions and neutrinos in compact objects

Abstract

Compact stellar objects like supernovae and neutron stars cool by the emission of light particles like neutrinos and axions from their very dense interiors. In this article, we study in detail the photo-production of axions and neutrinos. We point out that this channel is an unavoidable consequence of the existence of the anomaly-induced Wess-Zumino-Witten term and compute the relevant cooling rates. We then perform a complementary data-driven study where the rate of photo-production can be estimated from low-energy pion photo-production data. We however conclude that the cooling rates induced by the photo-production of axions and neutrinos are typically sub-dominant with respect to the main channels usually included.