Testing Fundamental Particle Physics with the Galactic White Dwarf Luminosity Function

TL;DR

This paper uses the white dwarf luminosity function from large surveys to test for properties of fundamental particles like neutrinos and axions by analyzing white dwarf cooling at high luminosities.

Contribution

It introduces a method to constrain neutrino magnetic moments and axion-electron couplings using high-luminosity white dwarf data from recent surveys.

Findings

Constraints on neutrino magnetic dipole moment and axion-electron coupling.

Improved understanding of white dwarf cooling and particle emission effects.

Validation of white dwarf luminosity function as a tool for particle physics.

Abstract

Recent determinations of the white dwarf luminosity function (WDLF) from very large surveys have extended our knowledge of the WDLF to very high luminosities. It has been shown that the shape of the luminosity function of white dwarfs (WDLF) is a powerful tool to test the possible properties and existence of fundamental weakly interacting subelectronvolt particles. This, together with the availability of new full evolutionary white dwarf models that are reliable at high luminosities, have opened the possibility of testing particle emission in the core of very hot white dwarfs. We use the available WDLFs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey to constrain the values of the neutrino magnetic dipole moment ($\mu_\nu$) and the axion-electron coupling constant ($g_{ae}$) of DFSZ-axions.