期刊
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
卷 890, 期 1, 页码 -出版社
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab6a0c
关键词
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资金
- UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) [ST/R000867/1]
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [834203]
- Swedish Science Agency [2018-03641]
- European Research Council [742104]
- STFC Rutherford Fellowship
- STFC Anne McLaren Fellowship
- ERC Advanced Grant [340442]
- Programma per Giovani Ricercatori-anno 2014 Rita Levi Montalcini
- Raymond and Beverley Sackler Distinguished Visitor Fellowship
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge
- NASA under the Chandra Guest Observer program
- BIS NeI capital grant [ST/J005673/1]
- STFC [ST/H008586/1, ST/K00333X/1]
- STFC [ST/P004636/2, ST/S000623/1, ST/R000867/1] Funding Source: UKRI
Axions/axion-like particles (ALPs) are a well-motivated extension of the Standard Model and are generic within String Theory. The X-ray transparency of the intracluster medium (ICM) in galaxy clusters is a powerful probe of light ALPs (with mass <10(-11)eV); as X-ray photons from an embedded or background source propagate through the magnetized ICM, they may undergo energy-dependent quantum mechanical conversion into ALPs (and vice versa), imprinting distortions on the X-ray spectrum. We present Chandra data for the active galactic nucleus NGC 1275 at the center of the Perseus cluster. Employing a 490 ks High Energy Transmission Gratings exposure, we obtain a high-quality 1-9 keV spectrum free from photon pileup and ICM contamination. Apart from iron-band features, the spectrum is described by a power-law continuum, with any spectral distortions at the <3% level. We compute photon survival probabilities as a function of ALP mass m(a) and ALP-photon coupling constant g(a gamma) for an ensemble of ICM magnetic field models, and then use the NGC 1275 spectrum to constrain the (m(a), g(a gamma))-plane. Marginalizing over magnetic field realizations, the 99.7% credible region limits the ALP-photon coupling to g(a gamma) < 6 - 8 x 10(-13) GeV-1 (depending upon magnetic field model) for masses m(a) < 1 x 10(-12) eV. These are the most stringent limit to date on g(a gamma) for these light ALPs, and have already reached the sensitivity limits of next-generation helioscopes and light-shining-through-wall experiments. We highlight the potential of these studies with the next-generation X-ray observatories Athena and Lynx, but note the critical importance of advances in relative calibration of these future X-ray spectrometers.
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