Lightening up primordial black holes in the galaxy with the QCD axion: Signals at the LOFAR telescope

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In this work, we study the luminosity that results from the conversion of QCD axion particles into photons in the magnetic field of the plasma accreting onto black holes (BHs). For the luminosities to be large two conditions need to be met: (i) there are large numbers of axions in the primordial BH surroundings as a result of the so-called superradiant instability; (ii) there exists a point inside the accreting region where the plasma and axion masses are similar and there is resonant axion-photon conversion. For BHs accreting from the interstellar medium in our Galaxy, the above conditions require the black hole to have subsolar masses and we are therefore led to consider a population of primordial black holes (PBHs). In the conservative window, where we stay within the nonrelativistic behavior of the plasma and neglect the possibility of nonlinear enhancement via magnetic stimulation, the typical frequencies of the emitted photons lie on the low-radio band. We thus study the prospects for detection using the LOFAR telescope, assuming the PBH abundance to be close to the maximal allowed by observations. We find that for PBH and QCD axion with masses in the range 10−5–10−4M⊙ and 4×10−8 and 4×10−7 eV, respectively, the flux density emitted by the closest PBH, assuming it accretes from the warm ionized medium, can be detected at the LOFAR telescope. Coincidentally, the PBH mass range coincides with the range that would explain the microlensing events found in OGLE. This might further motivate a dedicated search of these signals in the LOFAR data and other radio telescopes. Published by the American Physical Society 2024