Heating Neutron Stars with Inelastic Dark Matter and Relativistic Targets

Abstract

The dense environment of neutron stars makes them an excellent target for probing dark matter interactions with the Standard Model. We study neutron star heating from capture of inelastic dark matter, which can evade direct detection constraints. We investigate kinematics of the inelastic scattering process between quasirelativistic dark matter particles and ultrarelativistic targets in neutron stars, and derive analytical expressions for the maximal mass gap allowed for the scattering to occur. We implement them into a fully relativistic formalism for calculating the capture rate and apply it to various scenarios of inelastic dark matter. The projected constraints from neutron stars can systematically surpass those from terrestrial searches, including direct detection and collider experiments. Neutron stars can also be sensitive to the parameter space of inelastic self-interacting dark matter. Our results indicate that extreme astrophysical environments, such as neutron stars, are an important target for searching dark matter.

25 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (48)

• The James Webb Space Telescope
• A Theory of Dark Matter
• Secluded WIMP Dark Matter
• The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) Project
• Search for a dark photon in e+e- collisions at BABAR
• The WIMPless Miracle: Dark Matter Particles without Weak-scale Masses or Weak Interactions
• WIMP Annihilation and Cooling of Neutron Stars
• Compact Stars as Dark Matter Probes
• New Limits on Hidden Photons from Past Electron Beam Dumps
• Constraining Asymmetric Dark Matter through observations of compact stars
• Inelastic Dark Matter in Light of DAMA/LIBRA
• Bosonic Dark Matter in Neutron Stars and its Effect on Gravitational Wave Signal
• Candidates for Inelastic Dark Matter
• Constraints on Bosonic Dark Matter From Observations of Old Neutron Stars
• New Analysis of Neutron Star Constraints on Asymmetric Dark Matter
• Capture of Leptophilic Dark Matter in Neutron Stars
• Nuclear structure aspects of spin-independent WIMP scattering off xenon
• Self-Scattering for Dark Matter with an Excited State
• Exoplanets as Sub-GeV Dark Matter Detectors
• Observing the thermalization of dark matter in neutron stars
• Nucleon Structure and Strong Interactions in Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars
• Celestial-Body Focused Dark Matter Annihilation Throughout the Galaxy
• The Inelastic Frontier: Discovering Dark Matter at High Recoil Energy
• Impact of Resonance on Thermal Targets for Invisible Dark Photon Searches
• Dark Matter Heating vs. Rotochemical Heating in Old Neutron Stars
• Self-interacting inelastic dark matter: A viable solution to the small scale structure problems
• Dark Matter, Destroyer of Worlds: Neutrino, Thermal, and Existential Signatures from Black Holes in the Sun and Earth
• Self-interacting Dark Matter Without Direct Detection Constraints
• Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in White Dwarfs
• Bounds on Long-lived Dark Matter Mediators from Neutron Stars
• Scattering searches for dark matter in subhalos: neutron stars, cosmic rays, and old rocks
• Tidal Love Numbers of Novel and Admixed Celestial Objects
• Smoke and mirrors: Neutron star internal heating constraints on mirror matter
• Neutrinos from captured dark matter annihilation in a galactic population of neutron stars
• Celestial Objects as Strongly-Interacting Non-Annihilating Dark Matter Detectors
• Constraining decaying dark matter with neutron stars
• Neutron star observations of pseudoscalar-mediated dark matter
• Capture of Electroweak Multiplet Dark Matter in Neutron Stars
• Self-interacting Inelastic Dark Matter in the light of XENON1T excess
• Endothermic self-interacting dark matter in Milky Way-like dark matter haloes
• Multicomponent multiscatter capture of Dark Matter
• Astrophysical probes of inelastic dark matter with a light mediator
• Constraining self-interacting dark matter with the full dataset of PandaX-II
• New Thermal Relic Targets for Inelastic Vector-Portal Dark Matter
• Detection of Inelastic Dark Matter via Electron Recoils in SENSEI
• Analytic Approximations for the Velocity Suppression of Dark Matter Capture
• Light Dark Matter Accumulating in Planets: Nuclear Scattering
• Neutron Star Heating in Dark Matter Models for Muon g-2 with Scalar Lepton Partners up to the TeV Scale

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Bosonic Dark Matter in Light of the NICER Precise Mass-Radius Measurements
• Exploring the distribution and impact of bosonic dark matter in neutron stars
• Thermalization and Annihilation of Dark Matter in Neutron Stars
• Beyond Hawking evaporation of black holes formed by dark matter in compact stars
• Optimal Celestial Bodies for Dark Matter Detection
• Probing Dark Sectors with Neutron Stars
• Multi-Messenger and Cosmological Constraints on Dark Matter through Two-Fluid Neutron Star Modeling
• Troubles mounting for multipolar dark matter
• Relaxing Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation Near the Supermassive Black Hole in M87
• Cosmic-Ray Cooling in Active Galactic Nuclei as a New Probe of Inelastic Dark Matter
• Probing Superheavy Dark Matter with Exoplanets
• Seeking the nearest neutron stars using a new local electron density map
• Effects of Dark Matter on the Spontaneous Scalarization in Neutron Stars
• Multi-Component Dark Matter from Minimal Flavor Violation
• Dark, deep, deconfining: Phase transitions in neutron stars as powerful probes of hidden sectors