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Register a new userPossible evidence of QCD axion stars in HSC and OGLE microlensing events
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Dark matter in the form of axions is expected to form miniclusters, and their dense regions can harbor compact axion stars. Such axion stars could be discovered by microlensing events. In particular, some candidate events reported by Subaru HSC and OGLE can be explained simultaneousely if the axion stars with masses of the order of the Earth mass make up about $sim$20% of dark matter. For QCD axions, this corresponds to the axion mass in the range $10^{-9}-10^{-6}$ eV, which is consistent with the experimental constraints, as well as the cosmological anthropic window of parameters.
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A fraction of light scalar dark matter, especially axions, may organize into Bose-Einstein condensates, gravitationally bound clumps, boson stars, and be present in large number in galactic halos today. We compute the expected number of gravitational microlensing events of clumps composed of the ordinary QCD axion and axion-like-particles and derive microlensing constraints from the EROS-2 survey and the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam observation. We perform a detailed lensing calculation, including the finite lens and source size effects in our analysis. We constrain the axion mass in terms of the fraction of dark matter collapsed into clumps, the individual clump densities, and the axion self-coupling. We also consider and constrain clumps composed of a generic scalar dark matter candidate with repulsive self-interactions. Our analysis opens up a new window for the potential discovery of dark matter.
Microlensing events are usually selected among single-peaked non-repeating light curves in order to avoid confusion with variable stars. However, a microlensing event may exhibit a second microlensing brightening episode when the source or/and the lens is a binary system. A careful analysis of these repeating events provides an independent way to study the statistics of wide binary stars and to detect extrasolar planets. Previous theoretical studies predicted that 0.5 - 2 % of events should repeat due to wide binary lenses. We present a systematic search for such events in about 4000 light curves of microlensing candidates detected by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) towards the Galactic Bulge from 1992 to 2007. The search reveals a total of 19 repeating candidates, with 6 clearly due to a wide binary lens. As a by-product we find that 64 events (~2% of the total OGLE-III sample) have been miss-classified as microlensing; these miss-classified events are mostly nova or other types of eruptive stars. The number and importance of repeating events will increase considerably when the next-generation wide-field microlensing experiments become fully operational in the future.
We present the results from the OGLE-II survey (1996-2000) towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which has the aim of detecting the microlensing phenomena caused by dark matter compact objects in the Galactic Halo (Machos). We use high resolution HST images of the OGLE fields and derive the correction for the number of monitored stars in each field. This also yield blending distributions which we use in catalogue level Monte Carlo simulations of the microlensing events in order to calculate the detection efficiency of the events. We detect two candidates for microlensing events in the All Stars Sample, which translates into an optical depth of 0.43+-0.33x 10e-7. If both events were due to Macho the fraction of mass of compact dark matter objects in the Galactic halo would be 8+-6 per cent. This optical depth, however, along with the characteristics of the events, seems to be consistent with the self-lensing scenario, i.e., self-lensing alone is sufficient to explain the observed microlensing signal. Our results indicate a non-detection of Machos lensing towards the LMC with an upper limit on their abundance in the Galactic halo of 19 per cent for M=0.4 Msun and 10 per cent for masses between 0.01 and 0.2 Msun.
Probing the QCD axion dark matter (DM) hypothesis is extremely challenging as the axion interacts very weakly with Standard Model particles. We propose a new avenue to test the QCD axion DM via transient radio signatures coming from encounters between neutron stars (NSs) and axion minihalos around primordial black holes (PBHs). We consider a general QCD axion scenario in which the PQ symmetry breaking occurs before (or during) inflation coexisting with a small fraction of DM in the form of PBHs. The PBHs will unavoidably acquire around them axion minihalos with the typical length scale of parsecs. The axion density in the minihalos may be much higher than the local DM density, and the presence of these compact objects in the Milky Way today provides a novel chance for testing the axion DM hypothesis. We study the evolution of the minihalo mass distribution in the Galaxy accounting for tidal forces and estimate the encounter rate between NSs and the dressed PBHs. We find that the encounters give rise to transient line-like emission of radio frequency photons produced by the resonant axion-photon conversion in the NS magnetosphere and the characteristic signal could be detectable with the sensitivity of current and prospective radio telescopes.
As a cold dark matter candidate, the QCD axion may form Bose-Einstein condensates, called axion stars, with masses around $10^{-11},M_{odot}$. In this paper, we point out that a brand new astrophysical object, a Hydrogen Axion Star (HAS), may well be formed by ordinary baryonic matter becoming gravitationally bound to an axion star. We study the properties of the HAS and find that the hydrogen cloud has a high pressure and temperature in the center and is likely in the liquid metallic hydrogen state. Because of the high particle number densities for both the axion star and the hydrogen cloud, the feeble interaction between axion and hydrogen can still generate enough internal power, around $10^{13}~mbox{W}times(m_a/5~mbox{meV})^4$, to make these objects luminous point sources. High resolution ultraviolet, optical and infrared telescopes can discover HAS via black-body radiation.
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