Searching for axion-like time-dependent cosmic birefringence with data from SPT-3G
Creators: name: Ferguson, K. R.
name: Anderson, A. J.
name: Whitehorn, N.
name: Ade, P. A. R.
name: Archipley, M.
name: Avva, J. S.
name: Balkenhol, L.
name: Benabed, K.
name: Bender, A. N.
name: Benson, B. A.
name: Bianchini, F.
name: Bleem, L. E.
name: Bouchet, F. R.
name: Bryant, L.
name: Camphuis, E.
name: Carlstrom, J. E.
name: Cecil, T. W.
name: Chang, C. L.
name: Chaubal, P.
name: Chichura, P. M.
name: Chou, T. -L.
name: Crawford, T. M.
name: Cukierman, A.
name: Daley, C.
name: de Haan, T.
name: Dibert, K.
name: Dobbs, M. A.
name: Doussot, A.
name: Dutcher, D.
name: Everett, W.
name: Feng, C.
name: Foster, A.
name: Galli, S.
name: Gambrel, A. E.
name: Gardner, R. W.
name: Goeckner-Wald, N.
name: Gualtieri, R.
name: Guidi, F.
name: Guns, S.
name: Halverson, N. W.
name: Hivon, E.
name: Holder, G. P.
name: Holzapfel, W. L.
name: Hood, J. C.
name: Huang, N.
name: Knox, L.
name: Korman, M.
name: Kuo, C. -L.
name: Lee, A. T.
name: Lowitz, A. E.
name: Lu, C.
name: Millea, M.
name: Montgomery, J.
name: Natoli, T.
name: Noble, G. I.
name: Novosad, V.
name: Omori, Y.
name: Padin, S.
name: Pan, Z.
name: Paschos, P.
name: Prabhu, K.
name: Quan, W.
name: Rahlin, A.
name: Reichardt, C. L.
name: Rouble, M.
name: Ruhl, J. E.
name: Schiappucci, E.
name: Smecher, G.
name: Sobrin, J. A.
name: Stephen, J.
name: Suzuki, A.
name: Tandoi, C.
name: Thompson, K. L.
name: Thorne, B.
name: Tucker, C.
name: Umilta, C.
name: Vieira, J. D.
name: Wang, G.
name: Wu, W. L. K.
name: Yefremenko, V.
name: Young, M. R.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Ultralight axionlike particles (ALPs) are compelling dark matter candidates because of their potential to resolve small-scale discrepancies between $Λ$CDM predictions and cosmological observations. Axion-photon coupling induces a polarization rotation in linearly polarized photons traveling through an ALP field; thus, as the local ALP dark matter field oscillates in time, distant static polarized sources will appear to oscillate with a frequency proportional to the ALP mass. We use observations of the cosmic microwave background from SPT-3G, the current receiver on the South Pole Telescope, to set upper limits on the value of the axion-photon coupling constant $g_{ϕγ}$ over the approximate mass range $10^{-22} - 10^{-19}$ eV, corresponding to oscillation periods from 12 hours to 100 days. For periods between 1 and 100 days ($4.7 \times 10^{-22} \text{ eV} \leq m_ϕ\leq 4.7 \times 10^{-20} \text{ eV}$), where the limit is approximately constant, we set a median 95% C.L. upper limit on the amplitude of on-sky polarization rotation of 0.071 deg. Assuming that dark matter comprises a single ALP species with a local dark matter density of $0.3\text{ GeV/cm}^3$, this corresponds to $g_{ϕγ} &lt; 1.18 \times 10^{-12}\text{ GeV}^{-1} \times \left( \frac{m_ϕ}{1.0 \times 10^{-21} \text{ eV}} \right)$. These new limits represent an improvement over the previous strongest limits set using the same effect by a factor of ~3.8.
description: 16 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review D