Revisiting Turner Window Axions: The Untapped Potential of NaI Dark Matter Detectors

TL;DR

This paper revisits the Turner window for axions with masses above 1 eV, showing that improved modeling of SN1987A opacity opens new detection possibilities using NaI detectors to observe axions from stellar sources.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a more accurate treatment of SN1987A opacity weakens previous constraints, enabling the use of NaI detectors to detect axions from stellar sources within the Turner window.

Findings

Significant regions of the Turner window are now viable for axion detection.

NaI detectors can potentially detect axions with couplings as low as 10^{-6.5}.

Detection of axions from stellar sources at 440 keV is feasible with existing detector arrays.

Abstract

The "Turner window" corresponds to axions with masses $\gtrsim$ 1 eV that have sufficiently strong couplings to matter to evade limits from the cooling of SN1987A. This window, through which the trajectories for the KSVZ and DFSZ QCD axions run, has been thought to be largely closed because of (1) the floor established by SN1987A cooling, (2) the absence of SN1987A-associated photons in the Kamioka II detector, and (3) the limit on neutrons produced by solar axions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. We show that a more complete treatment of the axion opacity in SN1987A, significantly weakens (2). Consequently, for axion or axion-like particles with hadronic couplings, $g_{ann}$ and $g_{app}$, significant regions within the Turner window now become viable. We describe a new opportunity to constrain such hadronically coupled axions via their resonant absorption in NaI detectors. The source is the Milky Way's carbon-burning stars -- the progenitors of ONeMg white dwarfs as well as electron-capture and core-collapse supernovae -- which synthesize significant quantities of $^{23}$Na, keeping it at temperatures $\sim 10^9$K for periods up to tens of thousands of years. $^{23}$Na acts as a thermal pump to convert stellar energy into axions, which arrive at the Earth as a thermally broadened line at 440 keV. These axions can be detected via resonant absorption in NaI, with the needed detector arrays already in place, developed by DAMA/LIBRA and other collaborations to search for the elastic scattering of light WIMPs. In axion detection, NaI serves as both the target, producing $\gamma$'s following resonant absorption, and the detector for those $\gamma$'s. With current array masses and backgrounds, we find that the coupling range $|g_{app}| \sim 10^{-6.5}$--$10^{-2}$ can be covered after two years of data, including QCD axions with $m_a \gtrsim 10$ eV.