Stellar Signals of a Baryon-Number-Violating Long-Range Force

Understand

We entertain the novel possibility that long range forces may lead to violations of accidental symmetries, in particular baryon number.

• Employing an ultralight scalar, with a mass $\ll$ eV, we illustrate that this scenario can lead to vastly disparate nucleon lifetimes, in different astronomical objects.
• Such a long range interaction can yield a number of potentially observable effects, such as a flux of neutrinos at $\gtrsim 10$ MeV from the Sun and heating of old neutron stars.
• We examine the prospects for constraining this scenario, with current and future astrophysical data, and find that neutron star heating provides the strongest present and near term bounds.