The Primakoff effect: The Axion-Photon Mixing in the Context of Stellar Plasma Physics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how external magnetic fields in stellar plasmas can induce axion-photon mixing via the Primakoff effect, offering insights into axion production relevant for dark matter research.

Contribution

It models the axion-photon mixing in stellar plasma environments using the background field approximation, providing new theoretical insights into axion production mechanisms.

Findings

Derived transition probabilities for axion-photon conversion.

Calculated particle production rates in high-energy regimes.

Highlighted the Primakoff effect as a portal to dark matter detection.

Abstract

We propose in this work the study of the production of axions in stellar plasma medium through an external magnetic field. In the background field approximation, we can show that the presence of the external magnetic field induces a mixing between the photon and the axion, i.e. the so called Primakoff effect. Since the axion is one of the greatest candidates for dark matter, for being a neutral pseudo-scalar field, the Primakoff process constitutes a mechanism (or portal) to access the dark sector, which in turn provides us new perspectives beyond the standard model. In the high energies limit, observables like probabilities transitions and particles production rates were computed.