Constraints on axionlike particles with H.E.S.S. from the irregularity of the PKS 2155−304 energy spectrum

By A. Abramowski, F. Acero, F. Aharonian, F. Benkhali, A. Akhperjanian, E. Angüner, G. Anton, S. Balenderan, A. Balzer, A. Barnacka and 204 more. 2013

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Axionlike particles (ALPs) are hypothetical light (sub-eV) bosons predicted in some extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. In astrophysical environments comprising high-energy gamma rays and turbulent magnetic fields, the existence of ALPs can modify the energy spectrum of the gamma rays for a sufficiently large coupling between ALPs and photons. This modification would take the form of an irregular behavior of the energy spectrum in a limited energy range. Data from the H. E. S. S. observations of the distant BL Lac object PKS 2155 - 304 (z = 0.116) are used to derive upper limits at the 95% C. L. on the strength of the ALP coupling to photons, g(gamma a) < 2.1 x 10(-11) GeV-1 for an ALP mass between 15 and 60 neV. The results depend on assumptions on the magnetic field around the source, which are chosen conservatively. The derived constraints apply to both light pseudoscalar and scalar bosons that couple to the electromagnetic field.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1c808c80f34f2d55aab355491392ce66920e5d4e

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Citations in the corpus

The photo-philic QCD axion (2016, background): “ntains bounds from helioscopes (CAST) [21], from the lack of detection of a ray burst associated with supernova SN1987A [22], non observation of spectral irregularities by Fermi-LAT [23] and H.E.S.S. [24], and from astrophysical observations related to horizontal branch stars in Galactic Globular Cl”
Sensitivity projections for dark matter searches with the Fermi large area telescope (2016, background): “Cerenkov telescopes in the spectrum of the blazar PKS 2155−304 [275] (see also [276]), ALPs are now almost ruled out as a viable solution for the (now questioned) reported evidence of a reduced opacity of the Universe to γ rays [262] (blue shaded region in Fig.”
New experimental approaches in the search for axion-like particles (2018, methodology): “Both the HESS [371] and the Fermi-LAT [372] collaborations, using data from two particular sources, have relevant exclusions in the mass range 10−11−10−7 eV.”
Revisiting the SN1987A gamma-ray limit on ultralight axion-like particles (2014, background): “At much smaller masses, further limits have for instance been derived from magnetic white dwarfs [38], and from the non-observation of irregularities in TeV photon spectra [39].”