Tidal effects on primordial black hole capture in neutron stars
arXiv:2505.04709 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/09/050
Abstract
We revisit the problem of the capture of a primordial black hole (PBH) by a neutron star, accounting for the tidal perturbation from a nearby star or planet. For asteroid-mass PBHs, which could constitute all of the dark matter in the universe, a weakly bound post-capture orbit could be tidally disturbed to the point of preventing the PBH from settling in the neutron star and consuming it within a cosmologically short timescale. We show how this effect depends on environmental parameters and can weaken the proposed constraints based on observations of old neutron stars in high-density dark matter environments for PBH masses g. We also provide approximate analytical formulae for the capture rates.
14 pages, 7 figures. v2 is updated to match the version published in JCAP
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