Physicists show that neutron stars may be shrouded in clouds of axions

A team of physicists from the universities of Amsterdam, Princeton and Oxford have shown that extremely light particles known as axions may occur in large clouds around neutron stars. These axions could form an explanation for the elusive dark matter that cosmologists search for—and moreover, they might not be too difficult to observe.

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>In fact, the authors argue that if axions exist, axion clouds should be generic (for a wide range of axion properties they should form around most, perhaps even all, neutron stars), they should in general be very dense (forming a density possibly twenty orders of magnitude larger than local dark matter densities), and because of this they should lead to powerful observational signatures.

The latter potentially come in many types, of which the authors discuss two: a continuous signal emitted during large parts of a neutron star’s lifetime, but also a one-time burst of light at the end of a neutron star’s life, when it stops producing its electromagnetic radiation. Both of these signatures could be observed and used to probe the interaction between axions and photons beyond current limits, even using existing radio telescopes.<

Good luck then, always nice to see potentially empirically testable ideas.