Probing the axion–photon coupling with space-based gravitational wave detectors

Abstract

We propose a simple modification of space-based gravitational wave (GW) detector optical benches which would enable the measurement of vacuum birefringence of light induced by axion dark matter through its coupling to electromagnetism. Specifically, we propose to change a half-wave plate by a circular polarizer. While marginally affecting the sensitivity to GW by a factor , we show that such an adjustment would make future detectors such as LISA, TianQin, Taiji and Big-Bang Observer the most sensitive experiments at low axion masses.