Conveners
Polarization and fundamental physics
- Kenji Toma
Identification of dark matter has been an outstanding problem in physics and astronomy for decades. We found that the polarimetric observations of protoplanetary disks provides a one of the most sensitive probes of a well-motivated candidate for dark matter, axion. Since axion dark matter causes the rotation of the linear polarization plane of photon (i.e. birefringence), it should deform the...
In complement to spectro-imaging and timing observations, polarimetry provides a unique in-sight into the geometry and magnetic configuration of compact gamma-ray sources, such as neutron stars or black holes. Thanks to the Integral coded mask imaging technics which efficiently suppresses most of the background contribution, we have measured linearly polarized emission from the brightest...
