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Novel Constraints on Axions Produced in Pulsar Polar-Cap Cascades

Dion Noordhuis1,*,†, Anirudh Prabhu2,3,†, Samuel J. Witte1,†, Alexander Y. Chen4, Fábio Cruz5,6, and Christoph Weniger1

  • 1GRAPPA Institute, Institute for Theoretical Physics Amsterdam and Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 2Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
  • 3Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
  • 4Physics Department and McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
  • 5GoLP/Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
  • 6Inductiva Research Labs, Rua da Prata 80, 1100-420 Lisboa, Portugal

  • *Corresponding author: d.noordhuis@uva.nl
  • †These authors contributed equally to this work.
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 111004 – Published 15 September, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.111004

Abstract

Axions can be copiously produced in localized regions of neutron star magnetospheres where the ambient plasma is unable to efficiently screen the induced electric field. As these axions stream away from the neutron star they can resonantly transition into photons, generating a large broadband contribution to the neutron star’s intrinsic radio flux. In this Letter, we develop a comprehensive end-to-end framework to model this process from the initial production of axions to the final detection of radio photons, and derive constraints on the axion-photon coupling, gaγγ, using observations of 27 nearby pulsars. We study the modeling uncertainty in the sourced axion spectrum by comparing predictions from 2.5 dimensional particle-in-cell simulations with those derived using a semianalytic model; these results show remarkable agreement, leading to constraints on the axion-photon coupling that typically differ by a factor of no more than ∼2. The limits presented here are the strongest to date for axion masses 10−8  eV≲ma≲10−5  eV, and crucially do not rely on the assumption that axions are dark matter.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 111004– Published 15 September, 2023
  • Received 5 October 2022
  • Revised 27 March 2023
  • Accepted 12 July 2023
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