Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Compact Stars
arXiv:2212.08478 · doi:10.21468/SciPostPhysProc.12.057
Abstract
Compact stellar objects are promising cosmic laboratories to test the nature of dark matter (DM). DM captured by the strong gravitational field of these stellar remnants transfers kinetic energy to the star during the collision. This can have various effects such as anomalous heating of old compact stars. The proper calculation of the DM capture rate is key to derive bounds on DM interactions in any scenario involving DM accretion in a star. We improve former calculations, which rely on approximations, for both white dwarfs (WDs) and neutron stars (NSs). We account for the stellar structure, gravitational focusing, relativistic kinematics, Pauli blocking, realistic form factors, and strong interactions (NSs). Considering DM capture by scattering off either ions or degenerate electrons in WDs, we show that old WDs in DM-rich environments could probe the elusive sub-GeV mass regime for both DM-nucleon and DM-electron scattering. In NSs, DM can be captured via collisions with strongly interacting baryons or relativistic leptons. We project the NS sensitivity to DM-nucleon and DM-lepton scattering cross sections which greatly exceeds that of direct detection experiments, especially for low mass DM.
arXiv comment9 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to SciPost Physics Proceedings: 14th International Conference on Identification of Dark Matter (IDM) 2022
References in corpus (36)
- First Dark Matter Search Results from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment
- Light Dark Matter Search with Ionization Signals in XENON1T
- Dark Matter Search Results from the PandaX-4T Commissioning Run
- Low-Mass Dark Matter Search with the DarkSide-50 Experiment
- SENSEI: Direct-Detection Results on sub-GeV Dark Matter from a New Skipper-CCD
- New Constraints and Prospects for sub-GeV Dark Matter Scattering off Electrons in Xenon
- Projected Sensitivity of the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment
- Search for Light Dark Matter Interactions Enhanced by the Migdal effect or Bremsstrahlung in XENON1T
- Constraining Asymmetric Dark Matter through observations of compact stars
- Tools for model-independent bounds in direct dark matter searches
- Constraining the Spin-Dependent WIMP-Nucleon Cross Sections with XENON1T
- Low-Mass Dark Matter Search with CDMSlite
- Dark Kinetic Heating of Neutron Stars and An Infrared Window On WIMPs, SIMPs, and Pure Higgsinos
- Search for annihilating dark matter in the Sun with 3 years of IceCube data
- Complementarity of dark matter detectors in light of the neutrino background
- An Indirect Search for WIMPs in the Sun using 3109.6 days of upward-going muons in Super-Kamiokande
- Capture of Inelastic Dark Matter in White Dwarves
- Spin-Dependent Weakly-Interacting-Massive-Particle--Nucleon Cross Section Limits from First Data of PandaX-II Experiment
- Limits on Dark Matter Annihilation in the Sun using the ANTARES Neutrino Telescope
- Search for Light Dark Matter-Electron Scatterings in the PandaX-II Experiment
- Heating up Neutron Stars with Inelastic Dark Matter
- Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars
- Form factors for dark matter capture by the Sun in effective theories
- Search for Coherent Elastic Scattering of Solar B Neutrinos in the XENON1T Dark Matter Experiment
- The End of the White Dwarf Cooling Sequence in M4: an efficient approach
- Capture of Leptophilic Dark Matter in Neutron Stars
- Solar Neutrinos as a Signal and Background in Direct-Detection Experiments Searching for Sub-GeV Dark Matter With Electron Recoils
- Quark-Meson-Coupling (QMC) model for finite nuclei, nuclear matter and beyond
- Nucleon Structure and Strong Interactions in Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars
- Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars II: Leptonic Targets
- The relativistic Feynman-Metropolis-Teller theory for white-dwarfs in general relativity
- On the relativistic Thomas-Fermi treatment of compressed atoms and compressed nuclear matter cores of stellar dimensions
- Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars III: Nucleon and Exotic Targets
- Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in White Dwarfs
- Isovector Effects in Neutron Stars, Radii and the GW170817 Constraint
- Searching for Dark Matter in the Sun using Hyper-Kamiokande