Related papers: White dwarfs and Galactic dark matter
White Dwarfs (WDs) are the final evolutionary product of the vast majority of stars in the Universe. They are electron-degenerate structures characterized by no stable thermonuclear activity, and their evolution is generally described as a…
In the cosmological paradigm, cold dark matter (DM) dominates the mass content of the Universe and is present at every scale. Candidates for DM include many extensions of the standard model, such as weakly interacting massive particles…
The space density of white dwarfs is highly uncertain even nearby. This results from the fact that the known sample of white dwarfs is largely incomplete in part because most white dwarfs have been discovered as by-products in non-dedicated…
We speculate that the dark halos of dwarf galaxies and low surface brightness galaxies soften their central cusps by the decay of a fraction of cold dark matter (CDM) particles to a stable particle with a recoiling velocity of a few tens km…
Little is known about the incidence of magnetic fields among the coolest white dwarfs. Their spectra usually do not exhibit any absorption lines as the bound-bound opacities of hydrogen and helium are vanishingly small. Probing these stars…
We present a new formalism designed to discover dark matter annihilation occurring in the Milky Way's dwarf galaxies. The statistical framework extracts all available information in the data by simultaneously combining observations of all…
The nature of dark matter is one of the outstanding questions of astrophysics. The internal motions of member stars reveal that the lowest luminosity galaxies in the Local Group are the most dark-matter dominated. New large datasets allow…
Cosmological nucleosynthesis calculations imply that there should be both non-baryonic and baryonic dark matter. Recent data suggest that some of the non-baryonic dark matter must be "hot" (i.e. massive neutrinos) and there may also be…
One of the most important problems in astrophysics concerns the nature of the dark matter in galactic halos, whose presence is implied mainly by the observed flat rotation curves in spiral galaxies. In the framework of a baryonic scenario…
Observations by the MACHO collaboration suggest that a significant proportion of the galactic halo dark matter is in the form of compact objects with typical masses $M\sim 0.5M_{\odot}$. One of the current mysteries is the nature and origin…
Recent observations indicate that about half of the dwarf satellite galaxies around M31 orbit in a thin plane approximately aligned with the Milky Way. It has been argued that this observation along with several other features can be…
Clumping of elementary dark matter in the Galaxy halo may be inevitable. If so, the nondetection of certain dark matter candidates could simply mean that the local halo density is low. Conversely, indirect detection of annihilation products…
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…
White dwarf stars are the most common endpoint of stellar evolution. Therefore, these old, numerous and compact objects provide valuable information on the late stages of stellar evolution, the physics of dense plasma and the structure and…
The evolution of white dwarfs is a simple gravothermal process. This means that their luminosity function, i.e. the number of white dwarfs per unit bolometric magnitude and unit volume as a function of bolometric magnitude, is a…
The recently published GALFA-HI Compact Cloud Catalogue lists 20 neutral hydrogen clouds that might pinpoint previously undiscovered high-latitude dwarf galaxies. Detection of an associated gamma-ray dark matter signal could provide a route…
White dwarfs whose atmospheres are polluted by terrestrial-like planetary debris have become a powerful and unique tool to study evolved planetary systems. This paper presents results for an unbiased Spitzer IRAC search for circumstellar…
There is strong evidence for a large fraction of dark matter in the Universe. Some of the evidence and candidates for dark matter are reviewed. Dark matter in spiral galaxies may be in the form of cold dense clouds of molecular hydrogen.…
We present a mechanism that allows thermal relic dark matter to annihilate efficiently in the Galactic Halo and in galaxy clusters, but not in the lower-velocity environments of dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies. We realize this within a…
We investigate the effects of dark matter annihilation on objects with masses close to the sub-stellar limit, finding that the minimum mass for stable hydrogen burning is larger than the $\sim0.075 M_\odot $ value predicted in the Standard…