- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Searching for axions with time resolved pulsar polarimetry

Francesca Chadha-Day* and Tanmay Kumar Poddar†

  • Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP), Department of Physics, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom

  • *Contact author: francesca.chadha-day@durham.ac.uk
  • †Contact author: tanmay.k.poddar@durham.ac.uk
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 113, 123014 – Published 4 June, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/vml6-f38z

Abstract

Pulsars possess strong dipole magnetic fields that can source axion fields through the axion-photon interaction. Pulsars may therefore be surrounded by axion field configurations oscillating with the pulsar’s rotational period. These axions could be detected by observing their effect on the polarization of the pular’s emission. In this paper, we use time resolved observations of the optical polarization of the Crab pulsar to place bounds on the axion-photon coupling, demonstrating the potential of time resolved pulsar birefringence in the search for axions.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (43)

  1. R. D. Peccei and H. R. Quinn, CP conservation in the presence of instantons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 38, 1440 (1977).
  2. S. Weinberg, A new light boson?, Phys. Rev. Lett. 40, 223 (1978).
  3. R. D. Peccei and H. R. Quinn, Constraints imposed by CP conservation in the presence of instantons, Phys. Rev. D 16, 1791 (1977).
  4. F. Wilczek, Problem of strong P and T invariance in the presence of instantons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 40, 279 (1978).
  5. S. L. Adler, Axial vector vertex in spinor electrodynamics, Phys. Rev. 177, 2426 (1969).
  6. J. S. Bell and R. Jackiw, A PCAC puzzle: π0→γγ in the σ model, Nuovo Cimento A 60, 47 (1969).
  7. R. D. Peccei, The strong CP problem and axions, Lect. Notes Phys. 741, 3 (2008).
  8. C. A. Baker et al., An improved experimental limit on the electric dipole moment of the neutron, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 131801 (2006).
  9. J. E. Kim and G. Carosi, Axions and the strong CP problem, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 557 (2010); 91, 049902(E) (2019).
  10. G. Grilli di Cortona, E. Hardy, J. Pardo Vega, and G. Villadoro, The QCD axion, precisely, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2016) 034.
  11. J. Preskill, M. B. Wise, and F. Wilczek, Cosmology of the invisible axion, Phys. Lett. 120B, 127 (1983).
  12. L. F. Abbott and P. Sikivie, A cosmological bound on the invisible axion, Phys. Lett. 120B, 133 (1983).
  13. M. Dine and W. Fischler, The not so harmless axion, Phys. Lett. 120B, 137 (1983).
  14. P. Svrcek and E. Witten, Axions in string theory, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2006) 051.
  15. D. J. E. Marsh, Axion cosmology, Phys. Rep. 643, 1 (2016).
  16. A. Arvanitaki, S. Dimopoulos, S. Dubovsky, N. Kaloper, and J. March-Russell, String axiverse, Phys. Rev. D 81, 123530 (2010).
  17. W. Hu, R. Barkana, and A. Gruzinov, Cold and fuzzy dark matter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 1158 (2000).
  18. L. D. Duffy and K. van Bibber, Axions as dark matter particles, New J. Phys. 11, 105008 (2009).
  19. L. Hui, J. P. Ostriker, S. Tremaine, and E. Witten, Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter, Phys. Rev. D 95, 043541 (2017).
  20. F. Chadha-Day, J. Ellis, and D. J. E. Marsh, Axion dark matter: What is it and why now?, Sci. Adv. 8, abj3618 (2022).
  21. C. A. J. O’Hare, Cosmology of axion dark matter, Proc. Sci. COSMICWISPers (2024) 040 [arXiv:2403.17697].
  22. S. Profumo, An Introduction to Particle Dark Matter (World Scientific, Singapore, 2017).
  23. J. E. Moody and F. Wilczek, New macroscopic forces?, Phys. Rev. D 30, 130 (1984).
  24. C. O’Hare, cajohare/axionlimits: Axionlimits, https://cajohare.github.io/AxionLimits/ (2020).
  25. P. Moran, A. Shearer, R. Mignani, A. Słowikowska, A. De Luca, C. Gouiffès, and P. Laurent, Optical polarimetry of the inner crab nebula and pulsar, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 433, 2564 (2013).
  26. M. C. Weisskopf, P. Soffitta, L. Baldini, B. D. Ramsey, S. L. O’Dell et al., The imaging x-ray polarimetry explorer (IXPE): Pre-launch, J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst. 8, 026002 (2022).
  27. D. González-Caniulef, J. Heyl, S. Fabiani, P. Soffitta, E. Costa, N. Bucciantini, D. Kirmizibayrak, and F. Xie, Crab pulsar: IXPE observations reveal unified polarization properties in the optical and soft x-ray bands, Astron. Astrophys. 693, A152 (2025).
  28. A. J. Dean, D. J. Clark, J. B. Stephen, V. A. McBride, L. Bassani, A. Bazzano, A. J. Bird, A. B. Hill, S. E. Shaw, and P. Ubertini, Polarized gamma-ray emission from the Crab, Science 321, 1183 (2008).
  29. S. Adachi et al. (POLARBEAR Collaboration), Exploration of the polarization angle variability of the Crab Nebula with POLARBEAR and its application to the search for axionlike particles, Phys. Rev. D 110, 063013 (2024).
  30. T. Liu, G. Smoot, and Y. Zhao, Detecting axionlike dark matter with linearly polarized pulsar light, Phys. Rev. D 101, 063012 (2020).
  31. K. R. Ferguson et al. (SPT-3G Collaboration), Searching for axionlike time-dependent cosmic birefringence with data from SPT-3G, Phys. Rev. D 106, 042011 (2022).
  32. J. Fan, L. Li, and C. Sun, Pulse and polarization structures in axion-converted x-rays from pulsars, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 231801 (2025).
  33. A. J. Deutsch, The electromagnetic field of an idealized star in rigid rotation in vacuo, Ann. d’Astrophys. 18, 1 (1955), https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1955AnAp...18....1D.
  34. M. Khelashvili, M. Lisanti, A. Prabhu, and B. R. Safdi, Axion pulsarscope, Phys. Rev. D 111, 083027 (2025).
  35. B. Garbrecht and J. I. McDonald, Axion configurations around pulsars, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2018) 044.
  36. D. Blas, A. Caputo, M. M. Ivanov, and L. Sberna, No chiral light bending by clumps of axion-like particles, Phys. Dark Universe 27, 100428 (2020).
  37. S. Weinberg, Eikonal method in magnetohydrodynamics, Phys. Rev. 126, 1899 (1962).
  38. A. Lyne, C. Jordan, F. Graham-Smith, C. Espinoza, B. Stappers, and P. Weltrvrede, 45 years of rotation of the Crab pulsar, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 446, 857 (2015).
  39. A. Slowikowska, G. Kanbach, M. Kramer, and A. Stefanescu, Optical polarisation of the Crab pulsar: Precision measurements and comparison to the radio emission, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 397, 103 (2009).
  40. S. V. Bogovalov, I. Contopoulos, A. Prosekin, I. Tronin, and F. A. Aharonian, Magnetic absorption of VHE photons in the magnetosphere of the Crab pulsar, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 476, 4213 (2018).
  41. J. S. Reynés, J. H. Matthews, C. S. Reynolds, H. R. Russell, R. N. Smith, and M. C. D. Marsh, New constraints on light axion-like particles using Chandra transmission grating spectroscopy of the powerful cluster-hosted quasar H1821+643, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 510, 1264 (2021).
  42. A. Rowlinson, P. T. O’Brien, B. D. Metzger, N. R. Tanvir, and A. J. Levan, Signatures of magnetar central engines in short GRB lightcurves, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 430, 1061 (2013).
  43. https://gitlab.dur.scotgrid.ac.uk/FrancescaChadhaDay/searching-for-axions-with-time-resolved-pulsar-polarimetry/-/blob/f93078af5f6b543c67d5a9cd30f722956db2911f/README.md.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 113, 123014– Published 4 June, 2026
  • Received 18 March 2026
  • Accepted 8 May 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation