Parkes observations for project P1074 semester 2022APRS_01

One of the oldest and theoretically best motivated dark matter candidates are QCD axions, ultralight particles. For masses in the 10^{-6} to 10^{-3} eV range, these particles also naturally explain the observed amount of cold dark matter. Here, we propose to leverage on the fact that dark matter Axions can convert into photons when traversing the strong magnetic field in the magnetosphere of neutron stars. The observable signal is a narrow spectral line, with frequency that depends on the (unknown) axion mass. The ultra wide-band receiver at Parkes makes for the ability to search a range of observing frequencies at kHz spectral resolution, which provides a unique opportunity for these types of searches.