14–24 Jul 2025
CICG - International Conference Centre - Geneva, Switzerland
Europe/Zurich timezone

Detecting axion star mergers in the pi-axiverse

22 Jul 2025, 13:50
15m
Room 4

Room 4

Talk Dark-Matter Physics DM

Speaker

Geoff Beck

Description

With the WIMP parameter space slowly being ruled out by experiments on all fronts, axions have become a highly studied alternative dark matter candidate. In this talk we present a particle physics model where the pion states of a dark copy of QCD have both axion and dilaton phenomenologies. This model allows for the formation of dilute axion stars over a far larger parameter space than allowed in typical axion models. We explore whether such a model could be detected via FRB-like emissions associated with stable axion star mergers, these have unique broad spectra (rather than axion lines). We demonstrate that strong detection prospects exist for these events with both MeerKAT and upcoming experiments like the SKA and ngVLA.

Authors

Geoff Beck Mr Santiago Loane (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) Prof. Stephon Alexander (Brown University) Dr Tucker Manton (University of the Chinese Academy of Science)

Presentation materials