Murdin Prize Ceremony -- Constraining Beyond the Standard Model Physics with X-ray telescopes: Tightest constraints on low-mass Axion Like Particles with Chandra observations of H1821+643

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• Julia Sisk Reynes
• Wednesday 25 January 2023, 13:45-14:00
• The Hoyle Lecture Theatre + Zoom .

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Hannah Uebler.

Axion-Like Particles (ALPs) are a well-motivated extension to the Standard Model of particle physics. In the presence of a magnetised plasma such as the intracluster medium (ICM) in galaxy clusters, light may inter-convert into ALPs of a given mass m as determined by the ALP -photon coupling strength. At X-ray energies, we would expect photon-ALP oscillations to induce energy-dependent modulations on the intrinsic spectra of central AGN as their quanta travel through the magnetised ICM . This can be used to place bounds on the ALP -photon coupling for very-light ALPs, that is, of log(m/eV) < -12, given a model for the ICM magnetic field. I will present the tightest constraints to-date on such ALPs, which we inferred using a deep Chandra grating observation of the extraordinarily luminous radio-quiet cluster-hosted quasar H1821 +643.

This talk is part of the Institute of Astronomy Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology lists
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Institute of Astronomy Seminars
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• Kavli Institute for Cosmology Talk Lists
• Priscilla
• The Hoyle Lecture Theatre + Zoom

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