Abstract:
Stimulated decays of axion dark matter, triggered by a source in the sky, could produce a photon flux along the continuation of the line of sight, pointing backward to the source. The strength of this so-called axion “echo” signal depends on the entire history of the source and could still be strong from sources that are dim today but had a large flux density in the past, such as supernova remnants (SNRs). This echo signal turns out to be most observable in the radio band. In this talk, I will discuss the sensitivity of radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) to echo signals generated by SNRs that have already been observed. I will also show projections of detection reach for signals from old “ghost” SNRs which were very bright in the past but are so dim that they haven’t been observed now.