Can axionlike particles explain the alignments of the polarizations of light from quasars?

2011/07/11 by Alexandre Payez, A. Payez, J. R. Cudell +2 · 37 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Axion #Circular polarization #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Formalism (music) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Magnetic field #Particle physics #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Quantum mechanics #Quasar #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.CO #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.84.085029

published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 84(8) (American Physical Society) · Submitted to Physical Review D; for high-resolution figures, see http://hdl.handle.net/2268/95422

arxiv created 2011/07/11 · openalex publication_date 2011/10/25 · arxiv updated 2015/03/12 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The standard axionlike particle explanation of the observed large-scale coherent orientations of quasar polarization vectors is ruled out by the recent measurements of vanishing circular polarization. We introduce a more general wave-packet formalism and show that, although decoherence effects between waves of different frequencies can reduce significantly the amount of circular polarization, the axionlike particle hypothesis is disfavored given the bandwidth with which part of the observations were performed. Finally, we show that a more sophisticated model of extragalactic fields does not lead to an alignment of polarizations.

Citations

• Axion-like particles and circular polarisation of active galactic nuclei
• Photon-Axion-Like Particle Coupling Constant and Cosmological Observations
• A simple solution to the strong CP problem with a harmless axion
• Plasmons, Gauge Invariance, and Mass
• Dimming of supernovae by photon-pseudoscalar conversion and the intergalactic plasma
• Active Galactic Nuclei Shed Light on Axionlike Particles
• Axion-like particles, cosmic magnetic fields and gamma-ray astrophysics
• New Insights into the Quasar Type1/Type2 Dichotomy from Correlations between Quasar Host Orientation and Polarization
• Alignments in quasar polarizations: Pseudoscalar-photon mixing in the presence of correlated magnetic fields
• Constrained Simulations of the Real Universe. II. Observational Signatures of Intergalactic Gas in the Local Supercluster Region
• Photon-axion oscillations and type Ia supernovae
• The Low-Energy Frontier of Particle Physics
• Axions—motivation, limits and searches