MeerKAT Search of Dark Matter

Dark matter is the dominant matter in the Universe. In this talk, I will introduce two major scenarios of dark matter widely considered as the dark matter candidates: Axion dark matter and WIMP (Weakly Interactive Massive Particle), and show how the MeerKAT telescope can search and put constraints on their parameters. The first one is Axion, which was originally postulated to solve the strong CP problem in particle physics. Axions can be converted into monochromatic radiation in the neutron star’s magnetosphere, constituting a unique window to probe its existence with a radio telescope. We used the MeerKAT telescope for 10 hours to observe the isolated neutron star RX J0806.4-4123 in the UHF band. I will present the results of the constraints on the Axion DM decay rate from the newly observed MeerKAT data. In addition, WIMP dark matter can decay into standard model particles such as quarks and anti-quarks, leptons and anti-leptons which can eventually cascade into radiation in radial bands. We use the L-band MeerKAT telescope to observe the synchrotron emission of WIMP dark matter decay from two dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs; Reticulum II and Tucana III) and obtained strong constraints on WMIP decay channels. I will analyze these two current results and give future prospects on exploiting the entire capacity of MeerKAT to constrain dark matter.