English

On the circular polarisation of light from axion-photon mixing

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2014-11-20 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

From the analysis of measurements of the linear polarisation of visible light coming from quasars, the existence of large-scale coherent orientations of quasar polarisation vectors in some regions of the sky has been reported. Here, we show that this can be explained by the mixing of the incoming photons with nearly massless pseudoscalar (axion-like) particles in extragalactic magnetic fields. We present a new treatment in terms of wave packets and discuss its implications for the circular polarisation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0911.3145,
  title  = {On the circular polarisation of light from axion-photon mixing},
  author = {A. Payez and J. R. Cudell and D. Hutsemékers},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.3145},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

Contributed to "Invisible Universe International Conference", Paris, June 29 - July 3 2009. To be published in AIP proceedings