English

Strongly Interacting Dark Matter admixed Neutron Stars

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-04-08 v4 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Nuclear Theory

Abstract

Dark matter may accumulate in neutron stars given its gravitational interaction and abundance. We investigate the influence of strongly-interacting dark matter, described by a QCD-like one-flavor G2G_2 gauge theory, on neutron stars. This choice allows to test, for the first time, a first-principles-determined non-Abelian dark matter equation of state, which supports composite fermionic dark matter and thus a Fermi-pressure-stabilized dark matter component. The ordinary matter part of the mixed star is described by available model-agnostic equations of state that interpolate between the low-density regime and high-density regime. We find that strongly-interacting dark matter has a similar impact on neutron stars as other model equation of states and confirm that strongly-interacting dark matter can be accommodated by constraints from neutron star observations within our uncertainties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.19691,
  title  = {Strongly Interacting Dark Matter admixed Neutron Stars},
  author = {Yannick Dengler and Suchita Kulkarni and Axel Maas and Kevin Radl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.19691},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

29 pages, 11 figures; v4: Minor modifications v3: Substantially improved figures with more comparisons to observational data, various minor improvements in the text v2: Added appendix with technical details, various improvements and minor changes