The novel concept answers key questions related to the origins of dark matter and provides new avenues for ongoing detection efforts.
This work, published in Physical Review Letters, was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Michigan, and UC Berkeley.
The existence of dark matter has been confirmed by several independent observations, but its true identity remains a mystery.
According to this study, axion velocity provides a key insight into the dark matter puzzle.
The motion, generated by breaking of the axion shift symmetry, significantly modifies the conventional computation of the axion dark matter abundance.
Additionally, these dynamics allow axion dark matter to react more strongly with ordinary matter, exceeding the prediction of the conventional misalignment mechanism.
“Instead, we discovered that the axion field may be initially dynamic as a consequence of theories of quantum gravity with axions.”. »