Speaker
Description
The QCD axion, a favourable candidate for dark matter and a solution to the strong CP problem, can efficiently convert into photons in the presence of high magnetic fields. Neutron stars harbour high magnetic fields ($ \approx 10^{12}$ G) and serve as powerful probes to search for axion-photon conversion via observation of radio emission at the axion frequency $\hbar \omega = m_a c^2$, with $m_a$ the axion mass. The non-observation of signals currently places upper limits on the axion-photon coupling. Recently, much discussion has arisen about the efficient modelling of the neutron star population in the galaxy and a comparison between a ‘single star observation’ vs. a ‘population’ type observational approach. In our current work, I (with my collaborators) tackled these issues and used PsrPopPy, a Python-based package for modelling neutron stars in the galaxy and estimated the axion-photon signal from the galactic population. We provide the pros and cons of conducting a population analysis over a single-star analysis both for existing constraints and future MeerKAT and SKA observations.
