Hints for an axion-like particle from PKS 1222+216?

TL;DR

This paper proposes that photon-axion-like particle oscillations within the blazar PKS 1222+216 can explain the unexpected detection of very-high-energy gamma rays, challenging standard absorption models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel explanation involving photon-ALP oscillations inside the source to account for VHE gamma-ray observations in FSRQs.

Findings

Photon-ALP oscillations enable VHE photons to escape absorption.

VHE photon spectrum aligns with lower energy emissions in the same spectral peak.

Standard models can explain VHE observations without ad hoc assumptions.

Abstract

Flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) are a particular class of blazars rich of optical/ultraviolet photons inside the broad line region (BLR), necessarily implying a huge optical depth for $\gamma$ rays above 20 GeV. As a consequence, photons with energy above such a threshold should not be emitted. However, photons in the energy range 70 - 400 GeV have been observed by MAGIC from the FSRQ PKS 1222+216. Several astrophysical explanations exist in the literature, but they are all ad hoc, namely devised only for that specific purpose. We show that such a surprising discovery can be explained within standard blazar models by adding the new possibility that photons oscillate into axion-like particles (ALPs) and vice-versa inside the source. Through the photon-ALP oscillation mechanism a sizable fraction of very-high energy (VHE) photons can escape absorption from the BLR in a similar fashion as they largely avoid absorption from the extragalactic background light (EBL) in the intergalactic space. Actually, we show that not only are VHE photon indeed emitted, but also that their spectral energy distribution (SED) is such that they lie on the same Compton peak to which also lower energy photons simultaneously detected by Fermi/LAT belong.