On the circular polarisation of light from axion-photon mixing

Abstract

From the analysis of measurements of the linear polarisation of visible light coming from quasars, the existence of large-scale coherent orientations of quasar polarisation vectors in some regions of the sky has been reported. Here, we show that this can be explained by the mixing of the incoming photons with nearly massless pseudoscalar (axion-like) particles in extragalactic magnetic fields. We present a new treatment in terms of wave packets and discuss its implications for the circular polarisation.