On the Evidence for Axion-like Particles from Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

Burrage, Davis, and Shaw recently suggested exploiting the correlations between high and low energy luminosities of astrophysical objects to probe possible mixing between photons and axion-like particles (ALP) in magnetic field regions. They also presented evidence for the existence of ALP's by analyzing the optical/UV and X-ray monochromatic luminosities of AGNs. We extend their work by using the monochromatic luminosities of 320 unobscured Active Galactic Nuclei from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Xmm-Newton Quasar Survey (Young et al., 2009), which allows the exploration of 18 different combinations of optical/UV and X-ray monochromatic luminosities. However, we do not find compelling evidence for the existence of ALPs. Moreover, it appears that the signal reported by Burrage et al. is more likely due to X-ray absorption rather than to photon-ALP oscillation.

16 pages, 12 figures. Updated to reflect the minor changes introduced in the published version

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• Are Optically-Selected Quasars Universally X-Ray Luminous? X-Ray/UV Relations in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasars
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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Tests of Chameleon Gravity
• Physics potential of the International Axion Observatory (IAXO)
• Towards a new generation axion helioscope
• Indirect and direct search for dark matter
• A Compendium of Chameleon Constraints
• The intrinsic bispectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background [PhD thesis]
• Symmetron Scalar Fields: Modified Gravity, Dark Matter or Both?
• Axion-Photon Conversion in 3D Media and Astrophysical Plasmas
• The effective Lagrangian of dark energy from observations
• Dark Fluxes from Accreting Black Holes and Direct Detections
• Axion-like particles: possible hints and constraints from the high-energy Universe
• Fifth forces and discrete symmetry breaking
• Energetic axion-like particle production in galaxies