Pseudoscalar particles, with almost zero mass and very weak coupling to the visible matter, arise in many extensions of the standard model of particle physics. Their mixing with photons in the presence of an external magnetic field leads to many interesting astrophysical and cosmological consequences. This mixing depends on the medium properties, the momentum of the photon and the background magnetic field. Here we give a general treatment of pseudoscalar-photon oscillations in a background magnetic field, taking the Faraday term into account. We give predictions valid in all regimes, under the assumption that the frequency of the wave is much higher than the plasma frequency of the medium. At sufficiently high frequencies, the Faraday effect is negligible and we reproduce the standard pseudoscalar-photon mixing phenomenon. However at low frequencies, where Faraday effect is important, the mixing formulae are considerably modified. We explicitly compute the contribution due to the longitudinal mode of the photon and show that it is negligible.
Axions have been argued to form coherent axionic boson stars as well as incoherent axion gas. These are ones of most plausible candidates of dark matters. Since the axionic boson stars generate oscillating electric fields in an external magnetic field, they induce oscillating currents in magnetized conducting media, which result in emitting radiations. We show that colliding with a magnetic white dwarf, an axionic boson star can emit a monochromatic radiation with a frequency given by a mass of the axion.
Axions are possible candidates of dark matter in the present Universe. They have been argued to form axionic boson stars with small masses $\sim 10^{-12}M_{\odot}$. Since they possess oscillating electric fields in a magnetic field, they dissipate their energies in magnetized conducting media. We show that colliding with a magnetized white dwarf, the axionic boson stars dissipate their energies and heat the white dwarf. Consequently the white dwarf cooled sufficiently can emit detectable amount of radiations with the collision. Using a recent evaluation of the population of the white dwarfs as…
The energy loss rate of a magnetized electron gas emitting axions a due to the process $e^- \to e^- +a$ is derived for arbitrary magnetic field strength B. Requiring that for a strongly magnetized neutron star the axion luminosity is smaller than the neutrino luminosity we obtain the bound $g_{ae}\lsim 10^{-10}$ for the axion electron coupling constant. This limit is considerably weaker than the bound derived earlier by Borisov and Grishina using the same method. Applying a similar argument to magnetic white dwarf stars results in the more stringent bound $g_{ae}\lsim 9x10^{-13} (T/10^7 K)^{5/…
We considered recently as a new axion production mechanism the process $e^- \to e^- +a$ in a strong magnetic field $B$. Requiring that for a strongly magnetized neutron star the axion luminosity is smaller than the neutrino luminosity we obtained the bound $g_{ae} \lsim 10^{-10}$ for the axion electron coupling constant. This limit is considerably weaker than the bound derived earlier by Borisov and Grishina using the same method. Applying a similar argument to magnetic white dwarf stars we obtained $g_{ae}\lsim 9 \cdot 10^{-13} (T/10^7)^{5/4} (B/10^{10})^{-2}$, where $T$ is the internal tempe…
Astrophysical gamma-ray sources come in a variety of sizes and magnetizations. We deduce general conditions under which gamma-ray spectra from such sources would be significantly affected by axion-photon mixing. We show that, depending on strength and coherence of the magnetic field, axion couplings down to ~ 1/(10**13 GeV) can give rise to significant axion-photon conversions in the environment of accreting massive black holes. Resonances can occur between the axion mass term and the plasma frequency term as well as between the plasma frequency term and the vacuum Cotton-Mouton shift. Both re…
Axions are possible candidates of dark matter in the present Universe. They have been argued to form axionic boson stars with small masses $10^{-14}M_{\odot}\sim 10^{-11}M_{\odot}$. Since they possess oscillating electric fields in a magnetic field, they dissipate their energies in magnetized conducting media such as white dwarfs or neutron stars. At the same time the oscillating electric fields generate a monochromatic radiation with energy equal to mass of the axion. We argue that the effect of the energy dissipation can be seen in the old white dwarfs. In particular, We show that colliding …
We show that the axion decay constant does not get any correction at any order by external magnetic fields. On the other hand, in the context of the Wilsonian effective action under external magnetic fields, the axial currents get a finite correction. We then calculate the effect of strong magnetic fields $B>10^{18}G$ on the axion-nucleon coupling and find that if $B\gtrsim 10^{20}~G$ in strongly magnetized neutron and white dwarf stars, the emission rate of axions is enhanced by several orders of magnitude.
Axions are pseudo-scalar particles, those arise because of breaking of Peccei Queen (PQ) symmetry. Axions have a tree level coupling to two photons. As a consequence there exists a tree level coupling of axion to photon in a magnetic field. However, in an external magnetic field, there exists a new loop induced, axion photon vertex, that gives rise to axion photon coupling. The strength of the tree level axion photon coupling in magnetic field is known to be model dependent. However in a magnetic field, the new loop induced coupling has some interesting features. This note discusses the new ax…
The polarization operator of an axion in a degenerate gas of electrons occupying the ground-state Landau level in a superstrong magnetic field $H\gg H_0=m_e^2c^3/e\hbar =4.41\cdot 10^{13}$ G is investigated in a model with a tree-level axion-electron coupling. It is shown that a dynamic axion mass, which can fall within the allowed range of values $(10^{-5} eV \lesssim m_a\lesssim 10^{-2} eV)$, is generated under the conditions of strongly magnetized neutron stars. As a result, the dispersion relation for axions is appreciably different from that in a vacuum.
Axions are hypothetical particles related to the violation of the charge-parity symmetry, being the most prone candidates for dark matter. Multiple attempts to prove their existence are currently performed in different physical systems. Here, we anticipate the possibility of the axions coupling to the electrostatic (Langmuir) modes of a strongly magnetized plasma, by showing that a new quasi-particle can be defined, the axion-plasmon polariton. The excitation of axions can be inferred from the pronounced modification of the dispersion relation of the Langmuir waves, a feature that we estimate …
We study the conditions for the adiabatic resonant conversion of the cold dark matter (CDM) axions into photons in existence of the astrophysically sourced strong magnetic fields such as those in the neutron star magnetosphere. We demonstrate the possibility that the forthcoming radio telescopes such as the SKA (Square Kilometre Array) can probe those photon signals from the CDM axions.
Axions, the hypothetical particles restoring the charge-parity symmetry in the strong sector of the Standard Model, and one of the most prone candidates for dark matter, are well-known to interact with plasmas. In a recent publication [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 120}, 181803 (2018)], we have shown that if the plasma dynamically responds to the presence of axions, then a new quasi-particle (the axion plasmon-polariton) can be formed, being at the basis of a new generation of plasma-based detection techniques. In this work, we exploit the axion-plasmon hybridization to actively produce axions in stre…
It is analyzed the effects of a hot and magnetized medium on the axion mass, self-coupling and topological susceptibility when in presence of an anisotropic external magnetic field along the $z$-direction, within the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio effective model for quantum chromodynamics. The effects of both Magnetic Catalysis and Inverse Magnetic Catalysis are explicitly taken into account through appropriate matching of parameters with those from lattice Monte-Carlo numerical simulations. It is also analyzed the dependence of the results with respect to different model parametrizations in the context…
The current status of the QUAX R\&D program is presented. QUAX is a feasibility study for a detection of axion as dark matter based on the coupling to the electrons. The relevant signal is a magnetization change of a magnetic material placed inside a resonant microwave cavity and polarized with a static magnetic field.
We present a proposal to search for QCD axions with mass in the 200 $μ$eV range, assuming that they make a dominant component of dark matter. Due to the axion-electron spin coupling, their effect is equivalent to the application of an oscillating rf field with frequency and amplitude fixed by the axion mass and coupling respectively. This equivalent magnetic field would produce spin flips in a magnetic sample placed inside a static magnetic field, which determines the resonant interaction at the Larmor frequency. Spin flips would subsequently emit radio frequency photons that can be detected b…
In a constant and homogeneous magnetic background, quantum vacuum fluctuations due to axion-like fields can dominate over those associated with the electron-positron fields. Considering the framework of axion-electrodynamics, the self-energy operator for the electromagnetic field is determined with an accuracy to second-order in the axion-diphoton coupling. This outcome is utilized for establishing modifications to the propagation characteristics of photons and to the Coulomb potential of a static pointlike charge. Notably, in the magnetosphere of a neutron star, the effect of photon capture b…
A covariant description of the interactions of axion-like particles and hadrons
University of California Santa Cruz（加州大学圣克鲁兹分校）；Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics（圣克鲁兹粒子物理研究所）；Technion – Israel Institute of Technology（以色列理工学院）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
Simulating Axion Electrodynamics in Magnetized Plasmas: Energy transfer in the inhomogeneous and strongly varying limit
Dipartimento di Fisica, “Sapienza” Università di Roma & Sezione INFN Roma1（罗马大学物理系及INFN罗马第一分部）；Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)（马克斯·普朗克引力物理研究所（爱因斯坦研究所））；Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), University of Valencia-CSIC（瓦伦西亚大学-CSIC粒子物理研究所）；CENTRA, Departamento de Fisica, Instituto Superior Técnico – IST, Universidade de Lisboa – UL（里斯本大学技术学院物理系CENTRA中心）；Department of Theoretical Physics, CERN（欧洲核子研究中心理论物理部）；Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所粒子物理与天体物理系）；Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford（牛津大学鲁道夫·派尔斯理论物理中心）；Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY（德国电子同步加速器研究所）；II. Institute of Theoretical Physics, Universität Hamburg（汉堡大学第二理论物理研究所）
Oscillations between photons and axion-like particles (ALP) travelling in intergalactic magnetic fields have been invoked to explain a number of astrophysical phenomena, or used to constrain ALP properties using observations. One example is the anomalous transparency of the universe to TeV gamma-rays. The intergalactic magnetic field is usually modeled as patches of coherent domains, each with a uniform magnetic field, but the field orientation changes randomly from one domain to the next ("discrete-$φ$ model"). We show in this paper that in more realistic situations, when the magnetic field d…
Large-scale extragalactic magnetic fields may induce conversions between very-high-energy photons and axionlike particles (ALPs), thereby shielding the photons from absorption on the extragalactic background light. However, in simplified "cell" models, used so far to represent extragalactic magnetic fields, this mechanism would be strongly suppressed by current astrophysical bounds. Here we consider a recent model of extragalactic magnetic fields obtained from large-scale cosmological simulations. Such simulated magnetic fields would have large enhancement in the filaments of matter. As a resu…
The photon splitting gamma -> gamma gamma in a time-independent and inhomogeneous magnetized background is considered when neutral and ultralight spin-0 particles are coupled to two-photons. Depending on the inhomogeneity scale of the external field, resonant photon splitting can occur. If an optical laser crosses a magnetic field of few Tesla with typical inhomogeneity scale of the order of the meter, a potentially observable rate of photon splittings is expected for the PVLAS range of couplings and masses.
A polarized gamma ray emission spread over a sufficiently wide energy band from a strongly magnetized astrophysical object like gamma ray bursts (GRBs) offers an opportunity to test the hypothesis of axion like particles (ALPs). Based on evidences of polarized gamma ray emission detected in several gamma ray bursts we estimated the level of ALPs induced dichroism, which could take place in the magnetized fireball environment of a GRB. This allows to estimate the sensitivity of polarization measurements of GRBs to the ALP-photon coupling. This sensitivity $\gag\le 2.2\cdot 10^{-11} {\rm GeV^{-1…
Recent experiments suggest that polarized photons may couple significantly to pseudoscalar particles such as axions. We study the possible observational signatures of axion-photon coupling for radiation from magnetic stars, with particular focus on neutron stars. We present general methods for calculating the axion-photon conversion probability during propagation through a varying magnetized vacuum as well as across an inhomogeneous atmosphere. Partial axion-photon conversion may take place in the vacuum region outside the neutron star. Strong axion-photon mixing occurs due to a resonance in t…
Aim of the QUAX (QUaerere AXion) proposal is to exploit the interaction of cosmological axions with the spin of electrons in a magnetized sample. Their effect is equivalent to the application of an oscillating rf field with frequency and amplitude which are fixed by axion mass and coupling constant, respectively. The rf receiver module of the QUAX detector consists of magnetized samples with the Larmor resonance frequency tuned to the axion mass by a polarizing static magnetic field. The interaction of electrons with the axion-equivalent rf field produces oscillations in the total magnetizatio…
We show that solar axion conversion to photons in the Earth's magnetosphere can produce an x-ray flux, with average energy \sim 4 keV, which is measurable on the dark side of the Earth. The smallness of the Earth's magnetic field is compensated by a large magnetized volume. For axion masses < 10^{-4} eV, a low-Earth-orbit x-ray detector with an effective area of 10^4 cm^2, pointed at the solar core, can probe the photon-axion coupling down to 10^{-11} GeV^{-1}, in one year. Thus, the sensitivity of this new approach will be an order of magnitude beyond current laboratory limits.
We show that, by studying the arrival times of radio pulses from highly-magnetized transient beamed sources, it may be possible to detect light pseudo-scalar particles, such as axions and axion-like particles, whose existence could have considerable implications for the strong-CP problem of QCD as well as the dark matter problem in cosmology. Specifically, such light bosons may be detected with a much greater sensitivity, over a broad particle mass range, than is currently achievable by terrestrial experiments, and using indirect astrophysical considerations. The observable effect was discusse…
We present an analytic study of the dispersion relation for an isotropic magnetized plasma interacting with axions. We provide a quantitative picture of the electromagnetic plasma oscillations in both the ultrarelativistic and nonrelativistic regimes and considering both non-degenerate and degenerate media, accounting for the dispersion curves as a function of the plasma temperature and the ratio of the plasma phase velocity to the characteristic velocity of particles. We include the modifications on the Landau damping of plasma waves induced by the presence of the axion field, and we comment …
We study the two-point functions from chiral kinetic theory which characterize the response to perturbative vector and axial gauge fields in magnetized chiral plasma. In the lowest Landau level approximation, the solution of chiral kinetic equations gives density waves of electric and axial charges, which contain chiral magnetic wave implied by the axial anomaly and magnetic field. We then obtain the constitutive relations for covariant currents and stress tensor that involving the density waves. By considering the difference between consistent and covariant anomalies explicitly, the correlato…
Conversion of photons into axions under the presence of a strong magnetic field can dim the radiation from magnetized astrophysical objects. Here we perform a detailed calculation aimed at quantifying the signatures of photon-axion conversion in the spectra, light curves, and polarization of neutron stars (NSs). We take into account the energy and angle-dependence of the conversion probability and the surface thermal emission from NSs. The latter is computed from magnetized atmosphere models that include the effect of photon polarization mode conversion due to vacuum polarization. The resultin…
The coupling between axions and photons modifies Maxwell's equations, introducing a dynamo term in the magnetic induction equation. In neutron stars, for critical values of the axion decay constant and axion mass, the magnetic dynamo mechanism increases the total magnetic energy of the star. We show that this generates substantial internal heating due to enhanced dissipation of crustal electric currents. These mechanisms would lead magnetized neutron stars to increase their magnetic energy and thermal luminosity by several orders of magnitude, in contrast to observations of thermally-emitting …
GPS, an excellent tool for geodesy, may serve also particle physics. In the presence of Earth's magnetic field, a GPS photon may be transformed into an axion. The proposed experimental setup involves the transmission of a GPS signal from a satellite to another satellite, both in low orbit around the Earth. To increase the accuracy of the experiment, we evaluate the influence of Earth's gravitational field on the whole quantum phenomenon. There is a significant advantage in our proposal. While geomagnetic field B is low, the magnetized length L is very large, resulting into a scale (BL)^2 order…
The effect of a magnetized plasma on the resonant photoproduction of axions on the electromagnetic multipole components of the medium, $i \to f+a$, has been considered. It has been shown that the axion resonant emissivity, due to various reactions involving particles of the medium, is naturally expressed in terms of the emissivity of the photon $\to$ axion transition. The number of axions produced by the equilibrium cosmic microwave background radiation in the magnetar magnetosphere has been calculated. It has been shown that the resonant mechanism under consideration is inefficient for the pr…
The present work studies the dynamics of axion quark nuggets introduced in \cite{zhitnitsky} and exploited in the works \cite{zhitnitsky2}-\cite{zhitnitsky13}. The new feature considered here is the possibility that these nuggets become ferromagnetic. This possibility was pointed out in \cite{tatsumi}, although ferromagnetism may also take place due some anomaly terms found in \cite{son}-\cite{son2}. The purpose of the present letter however, is not to give evidence in favor or against these statements. Instead, it is focused in some direct consequences of this ferromagnetic behavior, if it ex…
We derive general expressions at the one-loop level for the coefficients of the covariant structure of the neutrino self-energy in the presence of a constant magnetic field. The neutrino energy spectrum and index of refraction are obtained for neutral and charged media in the strong-field limit ($M_{W}\gg \sqrt{B}\gg m_{e},T,μ,| \mathbf{p}| $) using the lowest Landau level approximation. The results found within the lowest Landau level approximation are numerically validated, summing in all Landau levels, for strong $B\gg T^{2}$ and weakly-strong $B \gtrsim T^{2}$ fields. The neutrino energy i…
We compute the fluxes of radio photons from conversion of axion-like particle dark matter in cosmic magnetic fields. We find that for axion-like particle masses around $10^{-6}\,$eV and effective coupling constants to photons $g_{aγ}\gtrsim10^{-13}\,{\rm GeV}^{-1}$ strongly magnetized nearby stellar winds may give detectable line-like radio photon signals, although predicted fluxes are highly uncertain due to the poorly known structure of the magnetic fields. Nevertheless, it may be worth while to conduct a dedicated search in the direction of such sources. When combined with a possible future…
Coupling of axion-like particles (ALPs) to photons in the presence of background magnetic field affects propagation of gamma-rays through magnetized environments. This results in modification in the gamma-ray spectra of sources in or behind galaxy clusters. We search for the ALP induced effects in the Fermi/LAT and MAGIC telescope spectra of the radio galaxy NGC 1275 embedded in Perseus galaxy cluster. We report an order-of-magnitude improved upper limit on the ALP-photon coupling constant in the 0.1-10 neV mass range from non-detection of the ALP imprints on the gamma-ray spectra. The improve…
In this paper we outline an experiment to detect the conversion of photons to axion-like particles (ALPs) in a strong magnetic field. We show that by modulating the polarization of the light passing through a Fabry-Perot cavity so that it effectively precesses at the modulation frequency, a signal is produced that is proportional to the square as opposed to the fourth power of the ALP-photon coupling constant. Assuming shot noise to be the dominant source of noise, we estimate that this approach is sensitive ALP masses less than $10^{-4} eV$ and couplings on the order to $g_{aγ}\sim 1.6\times …
Large field inflation can be sensitive to perturbative and nonperturbative quantum corrections that spoil slow roll. A large number $N$ of light species in the theory, which occur in many string constructions, can amplify these problems. One might even worry that in a de Sitter background, light species will lead to a violation of the covariant entropy bound at large $N$. If so, requiring the validity of the covariant entropy bound could limit the number of light species and their couplings, which in turn could severely constrain axion-driven inflation. Here we show that there is no such probl…
The QCD axion is an hypothetical particle introduced to solve the strong CP problem of standard model of particle physics and is of interest as a possible component of cold dark matter. In the axion scenario, J.E. Moody and F. Wilczek showed that a new macroscopic long-range force, mediated by axion exchange, acts on electron spins, and that such force can be described in terms of an effective magnetic field. The QUAX-g$_p$g$_s$ experiment, carried out at INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, is designed to search for the effects on magnetized samples of the effective field produced by unpolar…
We construct a new equation of state for the baryonic matter under an intense magnetic field within the framework of covariant density functional theory. The composition of matter includes hyperons as well as $ Δ$-resonances. The extension of the nucleonic functional to the hypernuclear sector is constrained by the experimental data on $Λ$ and $Ξ$-hypernuclei. We find that the equation of state stiffens with the inclusion of the magnetic field, which increases the maximum mass of neutron star compared to the non-magnetic case. In addition, the strangeness fraction in the matter is enhanced. Se…
We have proposed a model of non repeating fast radio bursts ( FRBs ); the collisions between axion stars and neutron stars generate the bursts. In this paper, we propose a model of repeating FRBs which shows that they arise from the several collisions between magnetized accretion disk of a black hole and an axion star orbiting the black hole. There would be many axions stars condensing as dark matter in an early stage galaxy so that such collisions arises repeatedly. The radiations are emitted by coherent oscillations of electrons in the accretion disk. The oscillations are caused by oscillati…
We study the photon self-energy for the in-medium photon in a three-flavor color superconductor in the presence of a magnetic field. At strong magnetic field, the quark dynamics becomes $(1+1)$-dimensional and the self-energy tensor only has longitudinal components. In this approximation there is no Debye or Meissner screenings at zero temperature, but the electric susceptibility is nonzero and highly anisotropic. In the direction transverse to the applied field, the electric susceptibility is the same as in vacuum, while in the longitudinal direction it depends on the magnitude of the magneti…
According to the model ($Λ$CDM), based on deep cosmological observations, the current universe is constituted of 5$\%$ baryonic matter and 25 $\%$ non-baryonic cold dark matter (of speculative origin). These include quanta of scalar filed like dilaton($ϕ$) of scale symmetry origin and quanta of pseudoscalar field of extra standard model symmetry ( Peccei-Quinn) origin, like axion ($ϕ'$). These fields couple to di-photons through dim-5 operators. In magnetized medium, they in principle can interact with the three degrees of freedom (two transverse ($A_{\parallel,\perp}$) and one longitudinal ($…
In this work, I study the mixing of photons with pseudoscalar particles and vice-versa in the presence of an external magnetic field and a pseudoscalar field. I solve exactly for the first time in the literature the equations of motion of the electromagnetic field coupled with a pseudoscalar field in the presence of a constant magnetic field with arbitrary direction with respect to the direction of propagation of the fields in vacuum. In addition, I also solve exactly the equations of motion in a magnetized plasma/gas for perpendicular propagation with respect to the external magnetic field. B…
