Supernova Bounds on Majoron-emitting decays of light neutrinos

Abstract

Neutrino masses arising from the spontaneous violation of ungauged lepton-number are accompanied by a physical Goldstone boson, generically called Majoron. In the high-density supernova medium the effects of Majoron-emitting neutrino decays are important even if they are suppressed in vacuo by small neutrino masses and/or small off-diagonal couplings. We reconsider the influence of these decays on the neutrino signal of supernovae in the light of recent Super-Kamiokande data on solar and atmospheric neutrinos. We find that majoron-neutrino coupling constants in the range $3\times 10^{-7}\lsim g\lsim 2\times 10^{-5}$ or $g \gsim 3 \times 10^{-4}$ are excluded by the observation of SN1987A. Then we discuss the potential of Superkamiokande and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory to detect majoron neutrino interactions in the case of a future galactic supernova. We find that these experiments could probe majoron neutrino interactions with improved sensitivity.