Axion-like particles and recent observations of the cosmic infrared background radiation

Abstract

The CIBER collaboration released their first observational data of the Cosmic IR background (CIB) radiation, which has significant excesses at around the wavelength ∼1 μ m compared to theoretically-inferred values. The amount of the CIB radiation has a significant influence on the opaqueness of the Universe for TeV gamma-rays emitted from distant sources such as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). With the value of CIB radiation reported by the CIBER experiment, through the reaction of such TeV gamma-rays with the CIB photons, the TeV gamma-rays should be significantly attenuated during propagation, which would lead to energy spectra in disagreement with current observations of TeV gamma ray sources. In this article, we discuss a possible resolution of this tension between the TeV gamma-ray observations and the CIB data in terms of axion [or axion-like particles (ALPs)] that may increase the transparency of the Universe by the anomaly-induced photon-axion mixing. We find a region in the parameter space of the axion mass, m_a∼7 ×1 0^-10- 5 ×1 0^-8 eV , and the axion-photon coupling constant, 1.5 ×10^-11 GeV^-1≲g_{a γ}≲8.8 ×10^-10 GeV^-1 that solves this problem.