Current and Future constraints on Very-Light Axion-Like Particles from X-ray observations of cluster-hosted Active Galaxies

2023/04/17 by Sisk-Reynes, Julia M., Reynolds, Christopher S., Matthews, James H.
#Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2304.08513

Abstract

We discuss our recent constraints on the coupling of Very-Light Axion-Like Particles (of masses < 10^-12 eV) to electromagnetism from Chandra observations of the cluster-hosted Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) H1821+643 and NGC1275. In both cases, the inferred high-quality AGN spectra excluded all photon-ALP couplings g_aγ > (6.3 - 8.0) × 10^-13 GeV^-1 at the 99.7% level, respectively, based on the non-detection of spectral distortions attributed to photon-ALP inter-conversion along the cluster line-of-sight. Finally, we present the prospects of tightening current bounds on such ALPs by up to a factor of 10 with next-generation X-ray observatories such as Athena, AXIS and LEM given their improved spectral and spatial resolution and collecting area compared to current missions.

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