Modelling gamma-ray-axion-like particle oscillations in turbulent magnetic fields: relevance for observations with Cherenkov telescopes [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2492


Axion-like particles (ALPs) are a common prediction of certain theories beyond the Standard Model and couple to photons in the presence of external magnetic fields. As a consequence, photon-ALP conversions could lead to an enhancement of the flux of extragalactic gamma-ray sources that is otherwise attenuated due to the interactions with background radiation fields. The magnetic fields traversed by the gamma rays are often turbulent and frequently modelled with a simple domain-like structure. Given a maximum mixing between photons and ALPs, we show that in such models realisations of the fields exist for which the photon-ALP oscillation probability vanishes. This behaviour does not occur in more sophisticated magnetic-field models.

Read this paper on arXiv…

M. Meyer
Tue, 9 Dec 14
35/64

Comments: 5 pages, 1 figure; proceedings of 10th Patras Workshop on Axions, WIMPs, and WISPs, Geneva, CERN, 29 June to 4 July 2014