Photons to axion-like particles conversion in Active Galactic Nuclei

Fabrizio Tavecchio, Marco Roncadelli, Giorgio Galanti

Published 2014-06-09, updated 2015-04-12Version 3

The idea that photons can convert into axion-like particles (ALPs) $\gamma \to a$ in or around an AGN and reconvert back into photons $a \to \gamma$ in the Milky Way magnetic field has been put forward in 2008 and has recently attracted growing interest. Yet, so far nobody has estimated the conversion probability $\gamma \to a$ as carefully as allowed by present-day knowledge. Our aim is to fill this gap. We first remark that AGN that can be detected above 100 GeV are blazars, namely AGN with jets, with one of them pointing towards us. Moreover, blazars fall into two well defined classes: BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs), with drastically different properties. In this Letter we report a preliminary evaluation of the $\gamma \to a$ conversion probability inside these two classes of blazars. Our findings are surprising. Indeed, while in the case of BL Lacs the conversion probability turns out to be totally unpredictable due to the strong dependence on the values of the somewhat uncertain position of the emission region along the jet and strength of the magnetic field therein, for FSRQs we are able to make a clear-cut prediction. Our results are of paramount importance in view of the planned very-high-energy photon detectors like the CTA, HAWK, GAMMA-400 and HISCORE.