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School of Physical and Chemical Sciences

Jamie McDonald (Louvain): Hunting for New Physics In Extreme Astrophysical Environments

When: Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - Monday, September 12, 2022, 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Where: Physics (G. O. Jones building) Room 516 & online, Mile End

Speaker: Jamie McDonald (Louvain)

Neutron stars are without doubt some of the most fascinating objects in the Universe. They may also be incredibly powerful tools for revealing physics beyond the standard model. In this talk we will show how neutron stars allow us to search for axions and axion like particles. We will first discuss how dark matter axions can convert into radio photons in the magnetospheres of neutron stars. Here we will discuss recent advances in modelling of the axion dark matter radio signal as well as reviewing some of the radio searches which have been carried out. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss superradiance in stars. Superradiance is a phenomenon more usually studied in the context of black holes which involves the exponentially rapid depletion of rotational energy from Kerr black holes by light bosonic fields. This leads to a buildup of dense bosonic fields around the black hole, allowing one to exclude certain mass ranges of light fields with black hole spin measurements. We may also detect gravitational waves associated to the superradiant field profiles with the next generation of gravitational wave detectors. Whilst we understand black hole superradiance comparatively well, until recently it has remained unclear how to formulate a theory of superradiance in rapidly rotating neutron stars. In this talk I will present our recent work (2207.07662) which provides the first general approach to superradiance in stars. This has the potential to unlock a whole new range of signatures. 

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