Searching for axionlike time-dependent cosmic birefringence with data from SPT-3G
Ultralight axionlike particles (ALPs) are compelling dark matter candidates because of their potential to resolve small-scale discrepancies between Λ CDM predictions and cosmological observations. Axion-photon coupling induces a polarization rotation in linearly polarized photons traveling through a...
| Published in: | Physical Review D |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/156650/ https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.042011 |
| Summary: | Ultralight axionlike particles (ALPs) are compelling dark matter candidates because of their potential to resolve small-scale discrepancies between Λ CDM 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 ϕ γ 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 /cm 3 , this corresponds to g ϕ γ <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 . |
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