Light bosons and photospheric solutions to the solar abundance problem

2012

It is well known that current spectroscopic determinations of the chemical composition of the Sun are starkly at odds with the metallicity implied by helioseismology. We investigate whether the discrepancy may be due to conversion of photons to a new light boson in the solar photosphere. We examine the impact of particles with axion-like interactions with the photon on the inferred photospheric abundances, showing that resonant axion-photon conversion is not possible in the region of the solar atmosphere in which line-formation occurs. Although non-resonant conversion in the line-forming regions can in principle impact derived abundances, constraints from axion-photon conversion experiments…