Photon-ALP beam propagation from Mrk 501
Abstract
The very high energy (VHE, E ) -ray observations offer a possibility of indirectly detecting the presence of axion-like particles (ALPs). The paper focuses on detecting photon-ALP oscillations on -ray spectra from distant sources in astrophysical magnetic fields. Strong evidence indicates that: (1) the photon-ALP oscillations can effectively decrease the photon absorption at energies of several tens of TeV -- caused by the extragalactic background light (EBL) -- to a level able to explain better the observational data; (2) the impact of magnetic-field models in photon-ALP beams crossing several magnetized media is significant. We revisit the expected signature for the photon-ALP oscillation effects on absorption in the TeV spectra of Mrk 501. The result issues that the photon-ALP beam propagation with mass and two-photon coupling constant crossing reasonable magnetic field scenarios considered here can roughly reproduce the observed TeV -ray spectra for Mrk 501.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.20804,
title = {Photon-ALP beam propagation from Mrk 501},
author = {L. J. Dong and Y. G. Zheng and S. J. Kang and C. Y. Yang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.20804},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in PRD, 14 pages, 4 figures, 1 table