Fast radio bursts from axion stars moving through pulsar magnetospheres

2020/04/30 by James H. Buckley, P. S. Bhupal Dev, Francesc Ferrer +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.103.043015

published as Phys. Rev. D 103, 043015 (2021) · Published version in Phys. Rev. D, 6 pages, 2 figures

arxiv created 2021/02/24 · arxiv updated 2021/02/25

Abstract

We study the radio signals generated when an axion star enters the magnetosphere of a neutron star. As the axion star moves through the resonant region where the plasma-induced photon mass becomes equal to the axion mass, the axions can efficiently convert into photons, giving rise to an intense, transient radio signal. We show that a dense axion star with a mass ∼ 10^-13M_\odot composed of ∼ 10 μeV axions can account for most of the mysterious fast radio bursts.

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