Heidelberg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 93: Search for New Particles 6

T 93.10: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 24. März 2022, 18:30–18:45, T-H24

Searching for axion-like particles via ultra-high-energy photons — •Chiara Papior, Markus Risse, and Philip Ruehl — Center for Particle Physics Siegen, Experimentelle Astroteilchenphysik, Universität Siegen

As axion-like particles (ALPs) provide solutions for several questions that current models leave unanswered, it is of great interest to study them experimentally. A potential coupling of ALPs to photons can be probed by large scale cosmic ray detectors like the Pierre Auger Observatory which are sensitive to ultra-high-energy (UHE) photons. After the hypothetical production of high energy ALPs in the environment of e.g. a flaring blazar or a binary neutron star merger, ALPs may propagate over cosmological distances through the intergalactic medium without attenuation. Back-conversion into UHE photons may happen via the Primakoff effect in the magnetic field of the local cluster or the Galaxy itself. A high-confidence detection of an UHE photon from a transient source well beyond the megaparsec scale would be a strong indicator for the presence of ALPs due to the opaqueness of the cosmic microwave background towards photons at these energies. The probability of the ALP-photon conversion depends on several parameters such as the magnetic field in the intergalactic medium, the distance of propagation and the mass and coupling of the ALPs themselves. The work presented in this contribution aims to evaluate the possibility to probe the phase space of UHE ALPs by using the functionality of the gammaALPs python package.