A new paper led by OKC researcher Thomas Edwards illuminates a potential path to the detection of the axion through the observation of flashes of radio emission from neutron stars. Axions, unlike other potential dark matter particles, sometimes form dense structures known as axion miniclusters which populate our entire Galaxy. When these miniclusters collide with neutron stars, the huge magnetic field of the neutron star allows the axions to convert into photons, producing a burst of radio emission. For the first time, they show that these bursts last from a few days to a few months and the brightest of these would be observable from Earth using current telescopes. Importantly, these encounters also happen regularly, meaning that they predict at least one bright radio transient in the sky at any time. The radio emission will be clustered towards the Galactic center, providing a clear observational target and a potential path to the detection of dark matter.
