Illuminating dark matter admixed in neutron stars with simultaneous mass-radius constraints
Abstract
We investigate how simultaneous mass and radius measurements of massive neutron stars (NSs) can help constrain properties of dark matter (DM) possibly admixed in them. Within a fermionic DM model that interacts only through gravitation, along with a well-constrained nuclear matter equation of state, we show that the simultaneous mass and radius measurement of PSRJ0740+6620 reduces the uncertainty of DM central energy density by more than 50\% compared to the results obtained from using the two observables independently, while other DM parameters remain unconstrained. Additionally, we find that the DM fraction should be smaller than 2\% when constrained by the observed NS maximum mass alone, and it could be even smaller than 0.3\% with the simultaneous measurement of mass and radius, supporting the conclusion that only a small amount of DM exists in DM admixed neutron stars (DANS).
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.07767,
title = {Illuminating dark matter admixed in neutron stars with simultaneous mass-radius constraints},
author = {Nai-Bo Zhang and Bao-An Li and Jia-Yu Zhang and Wei-Na Shen and Hui Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.07767},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
14 pages, 5 figures, published in Symmetry