2012/05/31 by Denis Wouters, Pierre Brun · 58 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Computational physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Energy (signal processing) #Gamma ray #Opacity #Optics #Photon #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Signature (topology) #Spectral line #Universe #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.86.043005
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 86(4) (American Physical Society) · 6 pages, 3 figures, matches accepted version, improved discussion on magnetic field models in v2
openalex publication_date 2012/08/15 · arxiv created 2012/09/12 · arxiv updated 2012/09/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Oscillations from high-energy photons into light pseudoscalar particles in an external magnetic field are expected to occur in some extensions of the standard model. It is usually assumed that those axionlike particles (ALPs) could produce a drop in the energy spectra of gamma ray sources and possibly decrease the opacity of the Universe for TeV gamma rays. We show here that these assumptions are in fact based on an average behavior that cannot happen in real observations of single sources. We propose a new method to search for photon-ALP oscillations, taking advantage of the fact that a single observation would deviate from the average expectation. Our method is based on the search for irregularities in the energy spectra of gamma ray sources. We predict features that are unlikely to be produced by known astrophysical processes and a new signature of ALPs that is easily falsifiable.