Hunting for Extragalactic Axion-like Dark Matter in a Decade-long Blazar Optical Polarimetry
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866908638431412224 |
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| author | Huang, Qiu-Ju Wang, Bao Wei, Jun-Jie Wu, Xue-Feng |
| author_facet | Huang, Qiu-Ju Wang, Bao Wei, Jun-Jie Wu, Xue-Feng |
| contents | Axions or axion-like particles (ALPs) are well-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates whose coupling to photons induces periodic oscillations in the polarization angle of astrophysical light. This work reports the first search for such a signature using ten years of optical polarimetric monitoring of the blazar 1ES 1959+650. No statistically significant periodicity is detected using a Lomb-Scargle periodogram and Monte Carlo analysis. Assuming a central DM density in the host galaxy, this null result places tight upper limits on the ALP-photon coupling constant at $g_{aγ}<(5.8 \times 10^{-14}-1.8\times 10^{-10})\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ across a broad ALP mass range of $m_a \sim (1.4\times10^{-23}-5.2\times10^{-20})\,\mathrm{eV}$. Our constraints surpass those from Very Long Baseline Array polarimetry of active galactic jets and are competitive with those from long-term Galactic pulsar timing of PSR J0437-4715 over the same ALP mass window. These results establish long-term blazar polarimetry as a competitive and complementary approach for probing axion-like DM on extragalactic scales. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_05839 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Hunting for Extragalactic Axion-like Dark Matter in a Decade-long Blazar Optical Polarimetry Huang, Qiu-Ju Wang, Bao Wei, Jun-Jie Wu, Xue-Feng High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Axions or axion-like particles (ALPs) are well-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates whose coupling to photons induces periodic oscillations in the polarization angle of astrophysical light. This work reports the first search for such a signature using ten years of optical polarimetric monitoring of the blazar 1ES 1959+650. No statistically significant periodicity is detected using a Lomb-Scargle periodogram and Monte Carlo analysis. Assuming a central DM density in the host galaxy, this null result places tight upper limits on the ALP-photon coupling constant at $g_{aγ}<(5.8 \times 10^{-14}-1.8\times 10^{-10})\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ across a broad ALP mass range of $m_a \sim (1.4\times10^{-23}-5.2\times10^{-20})\,\mathrm{eV}$. Our constraints surpass those from Very Long Baseline Array polarimetry of active galactic jets and are competitive with those from long-term Galactic pulsar timing of PSR J0437-4715 over the same ALP mass window. These results establish long-term blazar polarimetry as a competitive and complementary approach for probing axion-like DM on extragalactic scales. |
| title | Hunting for Extragalactic Axion-like Dark Matter in a Decade-long Blazar Optical Polarimetry |
| topic | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05839 |