Searching for Axion Dark Matter using Radio Telescopes

Understand

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 $1.7-57\mu$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$^{-1}$.