A Cosmic ALP Background and the Cluster Soft X-ray Excess in A665, A2199 and A2255

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether a cosmic background of axion-like particles can explain the soft X-ray excess observed in several galaxy clusters, extending previous models and comparing predictions with ROSAT data.

Contribution

It extends the cosmic ALP background model to three additional galaxy clusters and constrains the model parameters using observational data.

Findings

CAB can explain the soft X-ray excess in A2199 and A2255.

Good morphological agreement between model predictions and observations.

Mild tension in A665 due to excess at large radii, mitigated by uncertainties.

Abstract

It has been proposed that an excess in soft X-ray emission observed from many galaxy clusters can be explained by conversion into photons of axion-like particles (ALPs) in the cluster's magnetic field. Previously it has been shown that conversion of this primordially-generated background of relativistic ALPs---a cosmic ALP background (CAB)---can explain the observed soft X-ray excess in both the centre and the outskirts of the Coma cluster. Here we extend this work to the three clusters A665, A2199 and A2255. We use a stochastic model of the cluster magnetic field to numerically calculate ALP-photon conversion probabilities to predict the CAB-generated soft X-ray flux in these clusters. We compare this flux to ROSAT PSPC observations of the three clusters, and use these observations to constrain the CAB parameter space. We find the CAB can reproduce the magnitude of the observed excess in A2199 and A2255 for the same CAB parameters that match the observed soft excess in the Coma cluster. We also find good fit to the morphology of the excesses in these clusters. Simulation of CAB conversion in the cluster A665 is in mild tension with the other clusters due to producing a small but observable excess at large radii where none is observed. This tension is alleviated considering the uncertainty on predicting the count rate in the ROSAT detector, and on the systematics affecting the magnetic field determination. Overall we find good agreement between the CAB parameters for the four clusters studied so far.