Exploring axion dark matter through radio signals from magnetic white dwarf stars

Abstract

Axion as one of the promising dark matter candidates can be detected through narrow radio lines emitted from the magnetic white dwarf stars. Due to the existence of the strong magnetic field, the axion may resonantly convert into the radio photon (Primakoff effect) when it passes through a narrow region in the corona of the magnetic white dwarf, where the plasma frequency is equal to the axion mass. We show that for the magnetic white dwarf WD 2010+310, the future experiment SKA phase 1 with 100 hours of observation can effectively probe the parameter space of the axion-photon coupling gaγ up to ∼10-12 GeV-1 for the axion mass range of 0.2∼3.7 μeV. Note that in the low mass region (ma1.5 μeV), the WD 2010+310 could give greater sensitivity than the neutron star RX J0806.4-4123.