Constraining decaying dark matter with neutron stars

Abstract

The amount of decaying dark matter, accumulated in the central regions in neutron stars together with the energy deposition rate from decays, may set a limit on the neutron star survival rate against transitions to more compact objects provided nuclear matter is not the ultimate stable state of matter and that dark matter indeed is unstable. More generally, this limit sets constraints on the dark matter particle decay time, ${\tau }_{\chi }$. We find that in the range of uncertainties intrinsic to such a scenario, masses $(m_{\chi }/\mathrm{TeV})\gtrsim 9\times 10^{-4}$ or $(m_{\chi }/\mathrm{TeV})\gtrsim 5\times 10^{-2}$ and lifetimes ${\tau }_{\chi }\lesssim 10^{55}$ s and ${\tau }_{\chi }\lesssim 10^{53}$ s can be excluded in the bosonic or fermionic decay cases, respectively, in an optimistic estimate, while more conservatively, it decreases ${\tau }_{\chi }$ by a factor $\gtrsim 10^{20}$. We discuss the validity under which these results may improve with other current constraints.

6 pages, 1 figure, matches published version

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• Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
• Measurement of the Cosmic Ray e+ plus e- spectrum from 20 GeV to 1 TeV with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• WIMP Annihilation and Cooling of Neutron Stars
• Decaying Dark Matter can explain the electron/positron excesses
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Heating Neutron Stars with Inelastic Dark Matter and Relativistic Targets
• Indirect Detection of Dark Matter in the Galaxy