English

Neutron - mirror neutron mixing and neutron stars

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2021-12-08 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Theory

Abstract

The oscillation of neutrons nn into mirror neutrons nn', their mass degenerate partners from dark mirror sector, can have interesting implications for neutron stars: an ordinary neutron star could gradually transform into a mixed star consisting in part of mirror dark matter. Mixed stars can be detectable as twin partners of ordinary neutron stars: namely, there can exist compact stars with the same masses but having different radii. For a given equation of state (identical between the ordinary and mirror components), the mass and radius of a mixed star depend on the proportion between the ordinary and mirror components in its interior which in turn depends on its age. If 50%50%50 \% - 50\% proportion between two fractions can be reached asymptotically in time, then the maximum mass of such "maximally mixed stars" should be 2\sqrt2 times smaller than that of ordinary neutron star while the stars exceeding a critical mass value MNSmax/2M^{\rm max}_{NS}/\sqrt2 should collapse in black holes after certain time. We evaluate the evolution time and discuss the implications of nnn-n' transition for the pulsar observations as well as for the gravitational waves from the neutron star mergers and associated electromagnetic signals.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.15233,
  title  = {Neutron - mirror neutron mixing and neutron stars},
  author = {Zurab Berezhiani and Riccardo Biondi and Massimo Mannarelli and Francesco Tonelli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.15233},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

18 pages, 6 figures