Light at the End of the Tunnel: Searching for Axion-like Particles in Gamma-ray Energies

Oct 24, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Location

Madrone Seminar Room, Top Floor of Building 48 at SLAC

Speaker
Milena Crnogorcevic (University of Maryland) In Person

Zoom info: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/763419698?pwd=VTFjVzNheFhzY1NZVjR4OE1TRFBnZz09

Password: 419698

Axion-like particles (ALPs) are a well-motivated candidate for constituting a significant fraction of dark matter. They can be produced in high-energy environments, such as core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) or binary neutron star (BNS) mergers, and could undergo conversion into gamma-rays in the presence of an external magnetic field, with a characteristic spectrum peaking in the MeV energy range. As CCSNe and BNS mergers are progenitors to gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), studying the gamma-ray spectra of GRBs can be used as a probe into the physical properties of ALPs. Here, I present the results from ALP searches using the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations of long-duration GRBs using both the standard and LAT's Low Energy (LLE) technique. Furthermore, I offer an overview and motivation for utilizing the already-in-place multimessenger infrastructure for future ALP searches from BNS mergers, as well as introduce new venues for the exploration of new physics guided by the current and future multimessenger efforts.