Supernova constraints on massive (pseudo)scalar coupling to neutrinos

In this paper we derive constraints on the emission of a massive (pseudo)scalar S from annihilation of neutrinos in the core of supernovae through the dimension-4 coupling νν S , as well as the effective dimension-5 operator 1/Λ(νν)( SS ). While most of earlier studies have focused on massless or ultralight scalars, our analysis involves scalar with masses of order eV–GeV which can be copiously produced during {the explosion of supernovae, whose core temperature is} generally of order T ∼ O (10) MeV. From the luminosity and deleptonization arguments regarding the observation of SN1987A, we exclude a large range of couplings 10 −12 ≲ | g αβ |≲ 10 −5 for the dimension-4 case, depending on the neutrino flavours involved and the scalar mass. In the case of dimension-5 operator, for a scalar mass from MeV to 100 MeV the coupling h αβ get constrained from 10 −6 to 10 −2 , with the cutoff scale explicitly set Λ = 1 TeV. We finally show that if the neutrino burst of a nearby supernova explosion is detected by Super-Kamiokande and IceCube, the constraints will be largely reinforced.