On the evidence for axionlike particles from active galactic nuclei

Burrage, Davis, and Shaw [1] recently suggested exploiting the correlations between high and low energy luminosities of astrophysical objects to probe possible mixing between photons and axionlike particles (ALP) in magnetic field regions. They also presented evidence for the existence of ALP’s by analyzing the optical/UV and x-ray monochromatic luminosities of active galactic nuclei. We extend their work by using the monochromatic luminosities of 320 unobscured active galactic nuclei from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Xmm-Newton Quasar Survey [2] which allows the exploration of 18 different combinations of optical/UV and x-ray monochromatic luminosities. However, we do not find compelling evidence for the existence of ALPs. Moreover, it appears that the signal reported by Burrage et al. is more likely due to x-ray absorption rather than to photon-ALP oscillation.