Axion-like particle effects on the polarization of cosmic high-energy gamma sources

Abstract

Various satellite-borne missions are being planned to measure the polarization of a large number of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We show that the polarization pattern resulting from the current models of GRB emission can be drastically modified by the existence of very light axion-like particles (ALPs), which are predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Basically, the propagation of photons emitted by a GRB through cosmic magnetic fields with a domain-like structure induces photon-ALP mixing, which is expected to produce a strong modification of the initial photon polarization. Because of the random orientation of the magnetic field in each domain, this effect strongly depends on the orientation of the line of sight. As a consequence, photon-ALP conversion considerably broadens the initial polarization distribution. Searching for such a peculiar feature through future high-statistics polarimetric measurements therefore offers a new opportunity to discover very light ALPs.