Cooling of Neutron Stars admixed with Light Dark Matter: a case study

Abstract

Neutron Stars (NSs) are born as hot, lepton-rich objects that evolve according to the standard paradigm through subsequent stages where they radiate the excess of energy by emitting, first, neutrinos and, later on, photons. Current descriptions based on Standard Model calculations cannot fully explain all the existing cooling data series for the dozens of objects that have been reported. In this work, we consider the intriguing possibility that cooling NSs could be actually admixed with a fraction of light dark matter (LDM), $\chi$. We focus on a particular case study assuming a generic light candidate with mass $m_{\chi }=0.1$ $GeV/{\mathrm{c}}^2$ that undergoes self-annihilating reactions through pseudoscalar mediators producing neutrinos in the final state. We include one additional feature, allowing thermal conduction from LDM while inside the dark core. By performing simulations of the temperature evolution in the NS, we find that cooling patterns could be distorted by the presence of LDM and discuss these results in light of their observability.

6 pages, 2 figures. Accepted in Phys. Lett. B

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• Bosonic Dark Matter in Light of the NICER Precise Mass-Radius Measurements
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• Constraining self-interacting fermionic dark matter in admixed neutron stars using multimessenger astronomy
• Exploring the distribution and impact of bosonic dark matter in neutron stars
• R-modes as a New Probe of Dark Matter in Neutron Stars
• Rapid neutron star cooling triggered by dark matter
• The impact of asymmetric dark matter on the thermal evolution of nucleonic and hyperonic compact stars
• Cooling of dark neutron stars
• Ridges in rotating neutron-star properties due to first order phase transitions
• Neutrino signals from Neutron Star implosions to Black Holes
• Gauge-invariant perturbations of relativistic non-perfect fluids in spherical spacetime