Abstract
Axions and axion-like pseudoscalar particles with dimension-5 couplings to photons exhibit coherent Primakoff scattering with ordered crystals at keV energy scales, making for a natural detection technique in searches for solar axions. We find that there are large suppressive corrections, potentially greater than a factor of \( \mathcal{O} \)(103), to the coherent enhancement when taking into account absorption of the final state photon. This effect has already been accounted for in light-shining-through-wall experiments through the language of Darwin classical diffraction, but is missing from the literature in the context of solar axion searches that use a matrix element approach. We extend the treatment of the event rate with a heuristic description of absorption effects to bridge the gap between these two languages. Furthermore, we explore the Borrmann effect of anomalous absorption in lifting some of the event rate suppression by increasing the coherence length of the conversion. We study this phenomenon in Ge, NaI, and CsI crystal experiments and its impact on the projected sensitivities of SuperCDMS, LEGEND, and SABRE to the solar axion parameter space. Lastly, we comment on the reach of multi-tonne scale crystal detectors and strategies to maximize the discovery potential of experimental efforts in this vein.
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Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to Imran Alkhatib, Miriam Diamond, Amirata Sattari Javid, and John Sipe for the vigorous discussions and studies on the theoretical treatment of coherent Primakoff scattering in crystals and the comparison of numerical computations. We graciously thank Tomohiro Yamaji for the insight on Laue-type diffraction, Timon Emken for the technical correspondence on the DarkART package, and Alexander Poddubny for the useful comments on Biagini’s theory of anomalous absorption. The work of BD and AT is supported by the DOE Grant No. DE-SC0010813. JBD acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant no. PHY-2112799. Portions of this research were conducted with the advanced computing resources provided by Texas A&M High Performance Research Computing. We also thank the Center for Theoretical Underground Physics and Related Areas (CETUP*) and SURF for facilitating portions of this research.
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Dent, J.B., Dutta, B. & Thompson, A. Bragg-Primakoff axion photoconversion in crystal detectors. J. High Energ. Phys. 2024, 190 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2024)190
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2024)190