Comment on “Astrophysical consequences of a neutrinophilic two-Higgs-doublet model”

Several authors have pointed out that the scalar-mediated interaction of neutrinos in a neutrinophilic two-Higgs-doublet model can be as strong as an electromagnetic interaction [M. Sher and C. Triola, Phys. Rev. D 83, 117702 (2011)][F. Wang, W. Wang, and J. M. Yang, Europhys. Lett. 76, 388 (2006)][S. Gabriel and S. Nandi, Phys. Lett. B 655, 141 (2007)]. We show that the coupling constants of the neutrino-scalar interaction are actually restricted to be yᵢ1.5×10^-3 by supernova neutrino observations, and further constrained to be yᵢ2.3×10^-4 by precision measurements of acoustic peaks of the cosmic microwave background. Based on the energy-loss argument for supernova cores, we derive a slightly more restrictive bound yᵢ3.5×10^-5. Therefore, the neutrinophilic two-Higgs-doublet model has lost its spirit of explaining tiny Dirac neutrino masses while keeping neutrino Yukawa couplings of order one.