Speaker
Description
The QCD axion, originally proposed nearly five decades ago as a solution to the strong CP problem, remains one of the most compelling dark matter candidates. In this talk, I will explore the possibility that axions may undergo Bose-Einstein condensation in the dense cores of neutron stars, where extreme baryon densities could facilitate such a phase. Employing Chiral Perturbation Theory in conjunction with nuclear forces derived from Chiral Effective Field Theory, I will present evidence that axion condensation is not only theoretically plausible but may have astrophysically relevant consequences. Detecting - or definitively excluding - axion condensation in neutron star interiors would allow us to probe previously inaccessible regions of axion parameter space, with potentially
far-reaching implications for both axion phenomenology and the microphysics of dense nuclear matter.
