Searching for Axion Dark Matter Near Relaxing Magnetars
Sandip Roy, Anirudh Prabhu, Christopher Thompson, Samuel J. Witte, Carlos Blanco, and Jonathan Zhang

TL;DR
This paper investigates how realistic magnetar magnetospheres affect the detection prospects of axion dark matter through resonant photon conversion, highlighting significant uncertainties due to plasma structure variations.
Contribution
It constructs magnetar-specific charge and current distributions to reassess axion detection sensitivity, revealing large model-dependent differences in predicted signals.
Findings
Different magnetosphere models produce vastly different spectral line predictions.
Systematic uncertainties in plasma structure significantly impact detection prospects.
Observational signatures can help distinguish plasma loading mechanisms.
Abstract
Axion dark matter passing through the magnetospheres of magnetars can undergo hyper-efficient resonant mixing with low-energy photons, leading to the production of narrow spectral lines that could be detectable on Earth. Since this is a resonant process triggered by the spatial variation in the photon dispersion relation, the luminosity and spectral properties of the emission are highly sensitive to the charge and current densities permeating the magnetosphere. To date, a majority of the studies investigating this phenomenon have assumed a perfectly dipolar magnetic field structure with a near-field plasma distribution fixed to the minimal charge-separated force-free configuration. While this {may} be a reasonable treatment for the closed field lines of conventional radio pulsars, the strong magnetic fields around magnetars are believed to host processes that drive strong deviations…
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