Axion Photon Oscillations From a "Particle-Antiparticle" View Point

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel perspective on axion-photon oscillations by modeling the system as a complex field, revealing how external magnetic fields induce mixing through charge conjugation symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It introduces a complex field formulation for axion-photon interactions, providing a new interpretation of mixing as a consequence of symmetry breaking analogous to electric potential interactions.

Findings

Charge conjugation symmetry is preserved without magnetic field.

External magnetic field breaks symmetry, enabling axion-photon mixing.

The magnetic interaction is analogous to a complex charged field in an electric potential.

Abstract

We observe that it is very usefull to introduce a complex field for the axion photon system in an external magnetic field, when for example considered with the geometry of the experiments exploring axion photon mixing, where the real part is the axion and the imaginary part is the photon polarization that couples to the axion when the magnetic field is present. In the absence of the external magnetic field, the theory displays charge conjugation symmetry. In this formulation the axion and photon are the symmetric and antisymmetric combinations of particle and antiparticle (as defined from the complex field) respectively and they do not mix if the external magnetic field is set to zero. The magnetic field interaction is seen to be equivalent to first order to the interaction of the complex charged field with an external electric potential, where this ficticious "electric potential" is proportional to the external magnetic field. This interaction breaks the charge conjugation symmetry and therefore symmetric and antysymmetric combinations are not mantained in time. As a result one obtains axion photon mixing in the presence of an external magnetic field, a well known result understood in a different way.