Plasmon annihilation into Kaluza-Klein gravitons: New astrophysical constraints on large extra dimensions?

Abstract

In the large extra dimensional Kaluza-Klein (KK) scenario, where the usual standard model (SM) matter is confined to a 3+1-dimensional hypersurface called the 3-brane and gravity can propagate to the bulk (D=4+d, d being the number of extra spatial dimensions), the light graviton KK modes can be produced inside the supernova core due to the usual nucleon-nucleon bremstrahlung, electron-positron, and photon-photon annihilations. This photon inside the supernova becomes a plasmon due to the plasma effect. In this paper, we study the energy-loss rate of SN 1987A due to the KK gravitons produced from the plasmon-plasmon annihilation. We find that the SN 1987A cooling rate leads to the conservative bound MD > 22.9TeV and 1.38 TeV for the case of two and three spacelike extra dimensions. © 2008 The American Physical Society.