Speaker
Description
Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) comprise theoretically well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model. ALPs can be naturally light, very weakly interacting, and may interconvert with photons in magnetic fields. I will discuss efforts over the past several years that leverage precision observations of X-ray emission from active galactic nuclei in galaxy clusters to search for signals from ALPs through the ‟photon disappearance channel”. These searches have led to world-leading limits on light ALPs, and can be further improved over the coming decade through the launch of the next generation of X-ray telescopes. I will briefly discuss new theoretical results that draw on elementary properties of quantum perturbation theory and Fourier analysis to drastically simplify the analysis of weak axion-photon mixing, leading to new conceptual insights and more robust phenomenology.
