2008/04/30 by Hooman Davoudiasl, Patrick Huber · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Axion #Coupling (piping) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Detector #Earth's magnetic field #Limit (mathematics) #Neutrino Physics Research #Orbit (dynamics) #Satellite #Sensitivity (control systems) #astro-ph #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2008/08/026
37 pages, 7 figures and 3 tables. Grant contract information added; no other changes
openalex publication_date 2008/08/20 · arxiv created 2009/03/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present a detailed computation of the expected rate for geomagnetic conversion of solar axions to x-rays (GECOSAX) along the orbit of an x-ray satellite. We use realistic satellite orbits and propagation in time. A realistic model for the Earth's magnetic field, which properly accounts for its spatial non-uniformity, is used. We also account for the effect of the Earth's atmosphere on the propagation of x-rays in our calculation of axion–photon conversion probability. To estimate possible sensitivities to the axion–photon coupling g a γ , we use an actual measurement of the expected backgrounds by the SUZAKU satellite. Assuming an effective detector area of 10 3 cm 2 and about 10 6 s of data, we show that a 2 σ limit of g a γ <(4.7–6.6) × 10 −11 GeV −1 from GECOSAX is achievable, for axion masses m a <10 −4 eV. This significantly exceeds current laboratory sensitivities to g a γ .