Shining light on dark matter, with black-hole lasers
Italian
One of the most promising candidates to explain dark matter are axions, hypothetical ultralight particles that could also solve some theoretical problems in the current Standard Model of particle physics. If they exist, those particles could form large but almost invisible clouds around astrophysical black holes. Researchers from Lisbon and Sapienza have shown that these clouds could lead to powerful bursts of light that might make the entire system visible to us.
By extracting energy and angular momentum from rotating black holes, axions can accumulate around them, leading to several observable consequences such as continuous gravitational-wave emission. Most of previous studies neglected the interaction of these particles with photons. In paper recently published in PRL, Taishi Ikeda and Vitor Cardoso from Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon and Richard Brito, a Marie Curie Fellow at Sapienza have solved the full set of equations describing this system, and showed that powerful laser-like emission from axion clouds happen even at the classical level. The analysis suggests that a nearly quiescent invisible cloud of axions can suddenly release a large amount of electromagnetic radiation. These pulses are periodic and a possible clear signature of dark matter.
These results might have impact on searches for these new particles and could potentially lead to new ways to look for the existence of these elusive axions.
Reference:
Taishi Ikeda, Richard Brito and Vitor Cardoso
Blasts of Light from Axions