Astrophysical consequences of the existence of goldstone bosons

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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.