Searching for axionlike time-dependent cosmic birefringence with data from SPT-3G

• Published in: Physical Review D
• Main Authors: Ferguson, K. R., Anderson, A. J., Whitehorn, N., Ade, P. A. R., Archipley, M., Avva, J. S., Balkenhol, L., Benabed, K., Bender, A. N., Benson, B. A., Bianchini, F., Bleem, L. E., Bouchet, F. R., Bryant, L., Camphuis, E., Carlstrom, J. E., Cecil, T. W., Chang, C. L., Chaubal, P., Chichura, P. M., Chou, T.-L., Crawford, T. M., Cukierman, A., Daley, C., de Haan, T., Dibert, K. R., Dobbs, M. A., Doussot, A., Dutcher, D., Everett, W., Feng, C., Foster, A., Galli, S., Gambrel, A. E., Gardner, R. W., Goeckner-Wald, N., Gualtieri, R., Guidi, F., Guns, S., Halverson, N. W., Hivon, E., Holder, G. P., Holzapfel, W. L., Hood, J. C., Huang, N., Knox, L., Korman, M., Kuo, C.-L., Lee, A. T., Lowitz, A. E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: American Physical Society 2022
• Subjects: South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/117509/; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20221020-736967400.9

Ultralight axionlike particles (ALPs) are compelling dark matter candidates because of their potential to resolve small-scale discrepancies between ΛCDM predictions and cosmological observations. Axion-photon coupling induces a polarization rotation in linearly polarized photons traveling through an ALP field; thus, as the local ALP dark matter field oscillates in time, distant static polarized sources will appear to oscillate with a frequency proportional to the ALP mass. We use observations of the cosmic microwave background from SPT-3G, the current receiver on the South Pole Telescope, to set upper limits on the value of the axion-photon coupling constant g_(ϕγ) over the approximate mass range 10⁻²²-10⁻¹⁹ eV, corresponding to oscillation periods from 12 hours to 100 days. For periods between 1 and 100 days (4.7 × 10⁻²² eV ≤ m_ϕ ≤ 4.7 × 10⁻²⁰ eV), where the limit is approximately constant, we set a median 95% C.L. upper limit on the amplitude of on-sky polarization rotation of 0.071 deg. Assuming that dark matter comprises a single ALP species with a local dark matter density of 0.3 GeV /cm³, this corresponds to g_(ϕγ) < 1.18 × 10⁻¹² GeV⁻¹ × ((m_ϕ)/(1.0 × 10⁻²¹ eV)). These new limits represent an improvement over the previous strongest limits set using the same effect by a factor of ∼ 3.8.