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Particle Physics

The first axion?

Nature volume 441, pages 31–32 (2006)Cite this article

For almost 30 years, the hunt has been on for a ghostly particle proposed to plug a gap in the standard model of particle physics. The detection of a tiny optical effect might be the first positive sighting.

Writing in Physical Review Letters1, Emilio Zavattini and colleagues of the Italian PVLAS collaboration report that a magnetic field can be used to rotate the polarization of a light wave in a vacuum. Although this is the first experimental evidence for such an effect, there is a well-rehearsed, but controversial, explanation for it: the existence of a never-before-seen, chargeless, spinless and near-massless particle — the axion. Has the elusive axion finally allowed itself to be glimpsed?

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Figure 1: Now you see it?

APS

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  1. the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, 87545, New Mexico, USA

    Steve Lamoreaux

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  1. Steve Lamoreaux
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Lamoreaux, S. The first axion?. Nature 441, 31–32 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/441031a

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