If axion-like particles (ALPs) exist, photons can convert to ALPs on passage through regions containing magnetic fields. The magnetised intracluster medium of large galaxy clusters provides a region that is highly efficient at ALP-photon conversion. X-ray observations of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) located within galaxy clusters can be used to search for and constrain ALPs, as photon-ALP conversion would lead to energy-dependent quasi-sinusoidal modulations in the X-ray spectrum of an AGN. We use Chandra observations of the central AGN of the Perseus Cluster, NGC1275, to place bounds on massive ALPs up to m_a ~ 10^-11 eV, extending previous work that used this dataset to constrain massless ALPs.
@article{arxiv.1712.08313,
title = {Constraints on Massive Axion-Like Particles from X-ray Observations of NGC1275},
author = {Linhan Chen and Joseph P. Conlon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.08313},
year = {2018}
}