Effects of axions on Nucleosynthesis in massive stars

Understand

We investigate the effect of the axion cooling on the nucleosynthesis in a massive star with $16M_{\odot}$ by standard stellar evolution calculation.

• We find that the axion cooling suppresses the nuclear reactions in carbon, oxygen and silicon burning phases because of the extraction of the energy.
• As a result, larger amounts of the already synthesized neon and magnesium remain without being consumed to produce further heavier elements.
• Even in the case with the axion-photon coupling constant $g_{a\gamma}= 10^{-11}$ GeV$^{-1}$, which is six times smaller than the current upper limit, the amount of neon and magnesium that remain just before the core-collapse supernova explosion is considerably larger than the standard value.