A comprehensive calculation of the Primakoff process and the solar axion flux

Abstract

Abstract The Primakoff process plays a crucial role in axion production in astrophysical environments and laboratories. Given the rising interest in axion physics and many on-going experimental activities, we conduct a comprehensive calculation of this process and carefully examine several aspects that have been neglected in the literature. In particular, our calculation is valid for axions with significantly large masses, which would be of importance to axion searches utilizing crystal and liquid xenon detectors. We present the most updated calculation of the Primakoff solar axion flux, with a simple parametrization that is applicable to a broad range of axion masses up to a few tens of keV. Our code is publicly available at GitHub.