PVLAS Experiment: Some Astrophysical Consequences

Abstract

The birefringent effects of photon-pseudoscalar boson (Goldstone) particle mixing in intergalactic magnetic field are calculated for cosmological objects. We use the recent results of PVLAS collaboration that reported recently the observation of a rotation of the polarization plane of light propagating through a transverse static magnetic field. Such results which were interpretated as arising due to conversion of photon into pseudoscalar with coupling strength $g_{a\gamma }\sim 4\times 10^{-6}Ge{V}^{-1}$ allows us to estimate the intergalactic magnetic field magnitude as $\sim 10^{-16}G$ based on Hatsemekers et al. observations of extreme-scale alignments of quasar polarization vectors. We have analyzed some additional results of astronomical observations that could be explained by axion interpretation of the PVLAS data: a sharp steepening of the QSO continuum short ward of $\simeq 1100$Å, observed circular polarization of AGNs and QSOs, discrepancy between observed intrinsic polarization of stars in the Local Bubble and stellar spectral classification. The observed polarization of stars in the Local Bubble can't be explained by interstellar origin.

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Axions - Motivation, limits and searches
• Search for millicharged particles in reactor neutrino experiments: a probe of the PVLAS anomaly
• Reconciling the CAST and PVLAS Results
• Alignments in quasar polarizations: pseudoscalar-photon mixing in the presence of correlated magnetic fields
• Optical circular polarization in quasars
• Photon & Axion Oscillation In a Magnetized Medium: A Covariant Treatment
• Signatures of Pseudoscalar Photon Mixing in CMB Radiation
• Constraining axionlike particles using the distance-duality relation
• A complete 3D numerical study of the effects of pseudoscalar-photon mixing on quasar polarizations
• Dark Matter Axions, Non-Newtonian Gravity and Constraints on them from Recent Measurement of the Casimir Force in the Micrometer Separation Range
• New limit on pseudoscalar-photon mixing from WMAP Observations