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New bounds on Axion-Like Particles in the Ultraviolet from Legacy Data

Elisa Todarello

Abstract

We use legacy data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) to search for a spectral line from the spontaneous decay of axion-like particle (ALP) dark matter. The HST data consist of blank sky observations taken with the Faint Object Spectrograph in the 165--240~nm wavelength range, while the IUE data consist of observations of the Virgo Cluster obtained with the long- and short-wavelength spectrographs, covering 195--325~nm and 123--200~nm, respectively. We set a 95\% C.L. upper limit on the ALP--photon coupling $g_{aγ} \lesssim 10^{-11}~\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ across the whole probed ALP mass range. Notably, we rule out values of $g_{aγ}$ above $2.3 \times 10^{-12}~\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ for ALP masses between 12.4 and 14.5\,eV, improving upon previous limits by a factor of seven.

New bounds on Axion-Like Particles in the Ultraviolet from Legacy Data

Abstract

We use legacy data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) to search for a spectral line from the spontaneous decay of axion-like particle (ALP) dark matter. The HST data consist of blank sky observations taken with the Faint Object Spectrograph in the 165--240~nm wavelength range, while the IUE data consist of observations of the Virgo Cluster obtained with the long- and short-wavelength spectrographs, covering 195--325~nm and 123--200~nm, respectively. We set a 95\% C.L. upper limit on the ALP--photon coupling across the whole probed ALP mass range. Notably, we rule out values of above for ALP masses between 12.4 and 14.5\,eV, improving upon previous limits by a factor of seven.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 18 sections, 24 equations, 10 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. ALP signal
  3. Data and methods
  4. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS)
  5. Data
  6. Modeling of the signal
  7. International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE)
  8. Data
  9. Modeling of the signal
  10. Results
  11. HST FOS
  12. IUE
  13. Comparison with other work
  14. Conclusions
  15. FOS data reduction and forward modeling of the ALP signal
  16. ...and 3 more sections

Figures (10)

  • Figure 1: Three of the stacked HST FOS spectra used in this work. Each pointing is identified by the first six characters of the filenames that entered the stack.
  • Figure 2: IUE spectra acquired with the short-wavelength spectrograph. Red lines mark the continuum model.
  • Figure 3: IUE spectra acquired with the long-wavelength spectrograph. Red lines mark the continuum model.
  • Figure 4: Galactic coordinates of the observations taken with the short (red stars) and long (blue dots) wavelength spectrographs. The green triangle marks the position of M87, while the orange diamond is the assumed position of the center of the Virgo DM halo for our fiducial analysis.
  • Figure 5: Left: Velocity dispersion as a function of the distance along the line of sight $\ell$, for a line of sight passing through the center of the swp01854 observation. The orange line shows the total velocity dispersion, given by the halo contribution (blue line) plus the BH contribution. Right: Expected signal for observation swp01854, $m_a = 13$ eV and $g_{a\gamma} = 10^{-12}~\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$, assuming the modeling of our fiducial analysis.
  • ...and 5 more figures