Related papers: Bounding the Photon Mass with Solar Probes
Recent analyses have shown that distant orbits within the scattered disk population of the Kuiper belt exhibit an unexpected clustering in their respective arguments of perihelion. While several hypotheses have been put forward to explain…
The Pierre Auger Observatory has a unique potential to search for ultra-high energy photons (above ~1 EeV). First experimental limits on photons were obtained during construction of the southern part of the Observatory. Remarkably, already…
The CAST experiment is being mounted at CERN. It will make use of a decommissioned LHC test magnet to look for solar axions through its conversion into photons inside the magnetic field. The magnet has a field of 9 Tesla and length of 10 m…
The high-speed solar wind is typically the simplest and least stochastic type of large-scale plasma flow in the heliosphere. For much of the solar cycle, it is connected magnetically to large polar coronal holes on the Sun's surface.…
In this work, I re-examine the question of a possible explanation for the anomalous advance of Mercury's perihelion by the existence of a hypothetical planet, Vulcan, which I consider to be a kind of primordial black hole of planetary-mass.…
This white paper is a call for a concerted effort to support total solar eclipse observations over the next decade, in particular for the 21 August 2017 eclipse which will traverse the US continent. With the recent advances in image…
A search for resonant absorption of the solar axion by $^{83}\rm{Kr}$ nuclei was performed using the proportional counter installed inside the low-background setup at the Baksan Neutrino Observatory. The obtained model independent upper…
The flux of hypothetical "hidden photons" from the Sun is computed under the assumption that they interact with normal matter only through kinetic mixing with the ordinary standard model photon. Requiring that the exotic luminosity is…
It is well known that N-body simulations of ultralight bosons show the formation of a solitonic dark matter core in the innermost part of the halo. The scale length of such a soliton depends on the inverse of the mass of the boson. On the…
Optical data in the V-band gathered with the 8.2m ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the radio interferometric position of PSR 1706-44 are presented. The pulsar is close to a bright star in projection and was not detected. The pulsar…
We place the first constraints on the obliquity of a planetary-mass companion (PMC) outside of the Solar System. Our target is the directly imaged system 2MASS J01225093-2439505 (2M0122), which consists of a 120 Myr 0.4 M_sun star hosting a…
The decay of the solar wind helium to hydrogen temperature ratio due to Coulomb thermalization can be used to measure how far from the Sun strong preferential ion heating occurs. Previous work has shown that a zone of preferential ion…
SNO measurements strongly constrain the central temperature of the Sun within a precision of much less than 1%. This result can be used to constrain the parameter space of SUSY dark matter particle candidates. In this first analysis we find…
Some tests of gravity theories - periastron shift, geodetic precession, change in mean motion and gravitational redshift - are applied in solar and stellar systems to constrain the cosmological constant. We thus consider a length scale…
We used a torsion pendulum containing $\approx 10^{23}$ polarized electrons to search new interactions that couple to electron spin. We limit CP-violating interactions between the pendulum's electrons and unpolarized matter in the earth or…
The status of the solar axion search with the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST) will be discussed. Results from the first part of CAST phase II where the magnet bores were filled with \hefour gas at variable pressure in order to scan \ma up…
Electrostatic analyzers of different designs have been used since the earliest days of the space age, beginning with the very earliest solar wind measurements made by Mariner 2 en route to Venus in 1962. The Parker Solar Probe (PSP)…
Nearby masses can have a high probability of lensing stars in a distant background field. High-probability lensing, or mesolensing, can therefore be used to dramatically increase our knowledge of dark and dim objects in the solar…
Some tests of fundamental physics - the equation of state at supra-nuclear densities, the metric in strong gravity, the effect of magnetic fields above the quantum critical value - can only be measured using compact astrophysical objects:…
Motivated by the recent discovery of 30 new millisecond pulsars in Terzan 5, made using the Green Bank Telescope's S-band receiver and the Pulsar Spigot spectrometer, we have set out to use the same observing system in a systematic search…