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Searching for Axion Dark Matter using Radio Telescopes

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 نشر من قبل Katharine Kelley Miss
 تاريخ النشر 2017
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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We investigate the use of next generation radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) to detect axion two-photon coupling in the astrophysical environment. The uncertainty surrounding astrophysical magnetic fields presents new challenges, but with a frequency range corresponding to axions of mass $1.7-57mu$eV and a spectral profile with a number of distinguishing features, SKA-mid offers a tantalising opportunity to constrain axion dark matter properties. To determine the sensitivity of SKA-mid to an axion signal, we consider observations of the Galactic centre and interstellar medium, and find that this new telescope could allow us to probe axion couplings $gtrsim10^{-16}$GeV$^{-1}$.

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