Astrophysical consequences of the existence of goldstone bosons

Abstract We suggest routine astronomical methods of searching for light Goldstone bosons (arions) including massless arions. The basic idea is to use the conversion of photons into low-mass bosons in the magnetic fields of compact stars and also of interstellar and intergalactic media. This process depends strongly on the polarization state of a photon and may produce a noticeable amount of linear polarization. Polarimetric observations may give strong constraints on the axion masses and the axion coupling constant. The best candidates for the observations are core-emission pulsars, low-mass X-ray binaries, magnetic white dwarfs including AM Her type objects. For the interstellar medium, this effect can be comparable with the interstellar polarization. X-ray fluxes from quasars and AGNs may oscillate with the cosmological redshift z due to the conversion of X-ray photons into arions.