Axions and the pulsation periods of variable white dwarfs revisited

Understand

Axions are the natural consequence of the introduction of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry to solve the strong CP problem.

• All the efforts to detect such elusive particles have failed up to now.
• Nevertheless, it has been recently shown that the luminosity function of white dwarfs is best fitted if axions with a mass of a few meV are included in the evolutionary calculations.
• Our aim is to show that variable white dwarfs can provide additional and independent evidence about the existence of axions.