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  • Open Access

Probing solar symmetrons with direct detection

Hannah Banks1,2,*, Anne-Christine Davis1,†, and Luca Visinelli3,4,‡

  • *Contact author: hannah.banks@nyu.edu
  • †Contact author: a.c.davis@damtp.cam.ac.uk
  • ‡Contact author: lvisinelli@unisa.it
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 055029 – Published 16 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/89fw-fqqr

Abstract

We provide the first investigation of the solar production of symmetrons, a well-motivated class of screened scalar fields with density dependent couplings to the Standard Model, and their subsequent absorption in underground direct detection experiments. We compute the flux of symmetrons produced through photon conversion in the magnetic field of the solar tachocline, and constrain the resulting luminosity to not exceed 3% of the observed solar output. Even under the conservative assumption that production occurs only in the tachocline, this criterion yields robust astrophysical bounds on previously uncharted regions of symmetron parameter space, and predicts a keV-scale symmetron spectrum at Earth. We then derive the corresponding absorption signal in liquid xenon detectors, where symmetrons can interact with electrons through both conformal and disformal couplings. Using binned data from XENONnT, we obtain new direct-detection limits that are complementary to the solar luminosity constraint, further tightening the viable symmetron parameter space. Our results demonstrate that the Sun provides a testable, previously unexploited, source of symmetrons, and highlight that the interplay of astrophysical and laboratory searches offers a powerful strategy for probing screened scalar theories.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 055029– Published 16 September, 2026
  • Received 9 May 2026
  • Accepted 18 August 2026
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