Abstract
The hot and dense core formed in the collapse of a massive star is a powerful
source of hypothetical feebly-interacting particles such as sterile neutrinos,
dark photons, axion-like particles (ALPs), and others. Radiative decays such as
$a\to2\gamma$ deposit this energy in the surrounding material if the mean free
path is less than the radius of the progenitor star. For the first time, we use
a supernova (SN) population with particularly low explosion energies as the
most sensitive calorimeters to constrain this possibility. These SNe are
observationally identified as low-luminosity events with low ejecta velocities
and low masses of ejected $^56$Ni. Their low energies limit the energy
deposition from particle decays to less than about 0.1 B, where $1~\rm
B~(bethe)=10^51~erg$. For 1-500 MeV-mass ALPs, this generic argument
excludes ALP-photon couplings $G_a\gamma\gamma$ in the
$10^-10$-$10^-8~GeV^-1$ range.
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