Capture of Dark Matter in Neutron Stars

Abstract

The extreme conditions in Neutron Stars make them ideal test facilities for fundamental interactions. A Neutron Star can capture Dark Matter via scattering. As a result of the scattering, Dark Matter kinetic energy is transferred to the star. An observational consequence of this can be the warming of old neutron stars to near-infrared temperatures. Different approximations or simplifications have been applied to previous analyses of the capture process. In this article, we summarise a significantly improved treatment of Dark Matter capture, which properly accounts for all relevant physical effects over a wide range of Dark Matter masses. Among them are gravitational focusing, a fully relativistic scattering treatment, Pauli blocking, neutron star opacity and multiple scattering effects. This paper cites general expressions that allow the capture rate to be computed numerically, and simplified expressions for particular types of interactions or mass regimes, which greatly increase the efficiency of computation. As a result of our method, we are able to model the scattering of Dark Matter from any neutron star constituent as well as the capture of Dark Matter in other compact objects. Our results are applied to scattering of Dark Matter from neutrons, protons, leptons and exotic baryons.

6 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars
• Capture of Leptophilic Dark Matter in Neutron Stars
• Nucleon Structure and Strong Interactions in Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars
• Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars II: Leptonic Targets
• Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars III: Nucleon and Exotic Targets
• Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in White Dwarfs

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Consequences of neutron decay inside neutron stars
• Searching for New Physics in Ultradense Environment: a Review on Dark Matter Admixed Neutron Stars
• $f$-mode oscillations of dark matter admixed quarkyonic neutron star
• Dark Matter Influence on Quarkyonic Stars: A Relativistic Mean Field Analysis
• Confronting the dark matter capture rate with a continuous gravitational wave probe of local neutron stars
• Stringent Constraints on Gravitational Wave Signatures of Dark Electromagnetism in Neutron Star Binaries