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arXiv · 2506.05795

Smoking gun signature from axion and the constraints with radio telescopes

Abstract

Axions are an elegant solution to the strong CP problem for particle physics and a promising dark matter candidate. They can convert into photons under a strong magnetic field, while magnetars with extreme magnetic fields are natural labs for axion detection. Radio telescopes can detect the radio emission from axion-photon conversion near magnetars. In this study, we have refined the calculation of axion-photon conversion and developed the matched filtering integration method to largely improve the signal-to-noise ratio. We validate our method using end-to-end simulation and real observational data from TMRT. A new constraint is set with only 687 seconds of observations with TMRT. Using 10 hours of observation with the high-frequency receiver in FAST or SKA, we can reach the theoretical coupling constant prediction for the axion mass range from 1$\mu$eV to 100$\mu$eV. We validate the possibility of axion detection with radio telescopes and avoid spectrum confusion.

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Zixuan Liu, Jiajun Zhang. 2025-06-06. Smoking gun signature from axion and the constraints with radio telescopes. https://doi.org/10.1103/g18s-2ffj

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