Related papers: WIMP annihilation effects on primordial star forma…
The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe may be Dark Stars, powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly interacting massive particles, which are their own antiparticles, can annihilate and provide…
The formation of the first stars out of metal-free gas appears to result in stars at least an order of magnitude more massive than in the present-day case. We here consider what controls the transition from a primordial to a modern initial…
White Dwarfs (WD) capture Dark Matter (DM) as they orbit within their host halos. These captured particles may subsequently annihilate, heating the stellar core and preventing the WD from cooling. The potential wells of WDs are considerably…
Thermal freeze-out is a prominent example of dark matter (DM) production mechanism in the early Universe that can yield the correct relic density of stable weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). At the other end of the mass scale,…
When comparing constraints on the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) properties from direct and indirect detection experiments it is crucial that the assumptions made about the dark matter (DM) distribution are realistic and…
Supermassive stars born in pristine environments in the early Universe hold the promise of being the seeds for the supermassive black holes observed as high redshift quasars shortly after the epoch of reionisation. H$_2$ suppression is…
We use cosmological hydrodynamic zoom-in simulations and semi-analytical models to study the effects of primordial black holes (PBHs) on first star formation. Our models self-consistently combine two competing effects: initial…
Numerical simulations suggest that the first galaxies are formed in protogalactic halos with virial temperatures >= 10^4 K. It is likely that such halos are polluted with trace amounts of metals produced by the first generation of stars.…
The interaction properties of cold dark matter (CDM) particle candidates, such as those of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), generically lead to the structuring of dark matter on scales much smaller than typical galaxies,…
We describe results from a fully self-consistent three dimensional hydrodynamical simulation of the formation of one of the first stars in the Universe. Dark matter dominated pre-galactic objects form because of gravitational instability…
We study the impact of the halo shape and geometry on the expected weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter annihilation signal from the galactic center. As the halo profile in the innermost region is still poorly constrained,…
While the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) appears to be close to universal within the Milky Way galaxy, it is strongly suspected to be different in the primordial Universe, where molecular hydrogen cooling is less efficient and the gas…
Unveiling the nature of cosmic dark matter (DM) is an urgent issue in cosmology. Here we make use of a strategy based on the search for the imprints left on the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization spectra by the energy…
The first massive stars may influence the formation of second-generation stars, in part by their metal enrichment of the surrounding gas. We investigate the "critical metallicity", defined as the the value, Z_crit, at which primordial gas…
The thermodynamical evolution of gas during the collapse of the primordial star-forming cloud depends significantly on the initial degree of rotation. However, there is no clear understanding of how the initial rotation can affect the…
We use six, high-resolution $\Lambda$CDM simulations of galaxy formation to study how emission from dark matter annihilation is affected by baryonic processes. These simulations produce isolated, disc-dominated galaxies with structure,…
We modify a stellar structure code to estimate the effect upon the main sequence of the accretion of weakly interacting dark matter onto stars and its subsequent annihilation. The effect upon the stars depends upon whether the energy…
The first generation of protogalaxies likely formed out of primordial gas via H2-cooling in cosmological minihalos with virial temperatures of a few 1000K. However, their abundance is likely to have been severely limited by feedback…
The first stars form in dark matter halos of masses ~10^6 M_sun as suggested by an increasing number of numerical simulations. Radiation feedback from these stars expels most of the gas from their shallow potential well of their surrounding…
Gamma rays and microwave observations of the Galactic Center and surrounding areas indicate the presence of anomalous emission, whose origin remains ambiguous. The possibility of dark matter (DM) annihilation explaining both signals through…