Neutron stars as probes of dark matter

Abstract

Neutron Stars (NSs) are compact stellar objects that are stable solutions in General Relativity. Their internal structure is usually described using an equation of state that involves the presence of ordinary matter and its interactions. However there is now a large consensus that an elusive sector of matter in the Universe, described as dark matter, remains as yet undiscovered. In such a case, NSs should contain both, baryonic and dark matter. We argue that depending on the nature of the dark matter and in certain circumstances, the two matter components would form a mixture inside NSs that could trigger further changes, some of them observable. The very existence of NSs constrains the nature and interactions of dark matter in the Universe

5 pages. Invited contribution.This essay received an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation

References in corpus (6)

• Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection
• The Radial Acceleration Relation in Rotationally Supported Galaxies
• Constraining Asymmetric Dark Matter through observations of compact stars
• Are sterile neutrinos consistent with clusters, the CMB and MOND?
• A population of dust-enshrouded objects orbiting the Galactic black hole
• Fermionic Light Dark Matter particles and the New Physics of Neutron Stars

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Constraining Dark Matter properties with the first generation of stars
• Multicomponent multiscatter capture of Dark Matter
• Analytic Approximations for the Velocity Suppression of Dark Matter Capture
• Gravitational Wave emission in Binary Neutron Star early post-merger within a dark environment