Bounds on Axions-Like Particles Shining in the Ultra-Violet

2024/12/03 by Elisa Todarello, Marco Regis, Todarello, Elisa +1 · 1 voice · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #astro-ph.CO #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.02543

arxiv published 2024/12/03 · arxiv updated 2025/05/29

Abstract

Axion-like particles (ALPs) can decay into two photons with a rest-frame frequency given by half of the ALP mass. This implies that ultra-violet searches can be used to investigate ALPs in the multi-eV mass range. We use archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope between 110 and 170 nm to constrain ALPs with mass between 14.4-22.2 eV. We consider observations of a set of dwarf spheroidal galaxies and galaxy clusters and assume the ALP density in these objects to follow their dark matter density. The derived limit on the ALP-photon coupling g_aγ excludes values above 10^-12~\rm GeV^-1 over the whole mass range and surpasses previous limits by over one order of magnitude.

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Discussions

• This one is fun! It uses a novel observational approach for placing constraints on (eV-scale) axion-like particles -- searching for ultraviolet photon signatures using the #Hubble Space Telescope. #co [bsky, 4 points, 1 comments]

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