Searching for axionlike time-dependent cosmic birefringence with data from SPT-3G
K. R. Ferguson, A. J. Anderson, N. Whitehorn, P. A. R. Ade, M. Archipley, J. S. Avva, L. Balkenhol, K. Benabed, A. N. Bender, B. A. Benson, F. Bianchini, L. E. Bleem, F. R. Bouchet, L. Bryant, E. Camphuis, J. E. Carlstrom, T. Cecil, C. L. Chang, P. Chaubal, P. M. Chichura, T.-L. Chou, T. M. Crawford, A. Cukierman, C. Daley, T. de Haan, K. R. Dibert, M. Dobbs, Alexandre Doussot, D. Dutcher, W. Everett, C. Feng, A. Foster, S. Galli, A. E. Gambrel, R. W. Gardner, N. Goeckner-Wald, R. Gualtieri, F. Guidi, S. Guns, N. W. Halverson, E. Hivon, G. P. Holder, W. L. Holzapfel, J. C. Hood, N. Huang, L. Knox, M. Korman, C. L. Kuo, A. T. Lee, A. E. Lowitz, Chunyu Lu, M. Millea, J. Montgomery, Tyler Natoli, G. I. Noble, V. Novosad, Y. Omori, S. Padin, Z. Pan, P. Paschos, K. Prabhu, Wei Quan, A. Rahlin, C. L. Reichardt, M. Rouble, J. E. Ruhl, E. Schiappucci, G. Smecher, J. A. Sobrin, J. Stephen, A. Suzuki, C. Tandoi, K. L. Thompson, B. Thorne, C. Tucker, C. Umiltà, J. D. Vieira, G. Wang, W. L. K. Wu, V. Yefremenko, Matthew Young
Abstract
Ultralight axionlike particles (ALPs) are compelling dark matter candidates because of their potential to resolve small-scale discrepancies between $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}\mathrm{CDM}$ 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 ${g}_{\ensuremath{\phi}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ over the approximate mass range ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}22}--{10}^{\ensuremath{-}19}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}$, corresponding to oscillation periods from 12 hours to 100 days. For periods between 1 and 100 days ($4.7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}22}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}\ensuremath{\le}{m}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}\ensuremath{\le}4.7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}20}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}$), 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 $0.3\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{3}$, this corresponds to ${g}_{\ensuremath{\phi}\ensuremath{\gamma}}<1.18\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}12}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{GeV}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}(\frac{{m}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}}{1.0\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}21}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}})$. These new limits represent an improvement over the previous strongest limits set using the same effect by a factor of $\ensuremath{\sim}3.8$.