Investigating the light curve variation of magnetic white dwarfs induced by the axion-photon conversion

Abstract

Axion-photon oscillation refers to the process of mutual conversion between photons and axions when they propagate in a magnetic field. This process depends on the strength of the background magnetic field, and magnetic white dwarfs provide a natural laboratory for testing this process. In this work, we study the behavior of axion-photon oscillation near magnetic white dwarfs: as the magnetic white dwarf rotates, its magnetic field structure rotates accordingly, causing a periodic change of the magnetic field along the path of photons. These variations affect the axion-photon oscillation process experienced by the photons emitted from the white dwarf, thereby inducing a periodic modulation in the intensity and polarization of the white dwarf's thermal emission that we observe. Our study focuses on the impact of axion effects on the observed light curve variation and conducts a detailed investigation through numerical calculations. Using the light curve data of the white dwarf PG1015+014 obtained from the observations by the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, which has a photometric precision of $\sim 1\%$, we derive the constraints on axion parameters. In the axion mass range of $\lesssim 10^{-8}\mathrm{eV}$, the 95\% credible interval upper limit of the axion-photon coupling $g_{a\gamma \gamma }$ is constrained to $<8.1\times 10^{-12}\mathrm{Ge}{\mathrm{V}}^{-1}$.

9 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Search for "Invisible" Axion Dark Matter in the $3.3\text{-}4.2\mu$eV Mass Range
• The search for low-mass axion dark matter with ABRACADABRA-10cm
• A new upper limit on the axion-photon coupling with an extended CAST run with a Xe-based Micromegas detector
• No evidence for axions from Chandra observation of magnetic white dwarf
• Supernova axions convert to gamma-rays in magnetic fields of progenitor stars
• Searching for Axion-Like Particles with the Blazar Observations of MAGIC and Fermi-LAT
• Constraints on axionlike particles from a combined analysis of three flaring $\text{Fermi}$ flat-spectrum radio quasars
• Constraints on axion-like particles with the Perseus Galaxy Cluster with MAGIC
• Explore the Axion Dark Matter through the Radio Signals from Magnetic White Dwarf Stars
• First results from the Axion Dark-Matter Birefringent Cavity (ADBC) experiment
• Constraining Axion-Like Particles Dark Matter in Coma Berenices with FAST
• Axion effects on gamma-ray spectral irregularities with AGN redshift uncertainty
• An attempt to study axion-photon coupling using compact binary systems with high Shapiro time delay