Speaker
Sylvia Zhu
Description
Axions are well-motivated theoretical particles that are also dark matter candidates. They can form enormous clouds around black holes, and then annihilate to produce a long-lived, slowly-evolving continuous gravitational-wave signal. This signal is potentially detectable using the current generation of gravitational-wave interferometers, and a non-detection can disfavor the existence of axions in certain mass ranges. I will discuss the expected gravitational-wave signal from axion clouds around the black holes in the Galaxy, and the prospects for detecting the signal using standard searches for continuous gravitational waves.
Author
Sylvia Zhu
