Related papers: Dark matter burners
We show that self-annihilating neutralino WIMP dark matter accreted onto neutron stars may provide a mechanism to seed compact objects with long-lived lumps of strange quark matter, or strangelets, for WIMP masses above a few GeV. This…
We study the impact of the capture and annihilation of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) on the evolution of Pop III stars. With a suitable modification of the Geneva stellar evolution code, we study the evolution of 20 and 200…
If dark matter is a new species of particle produced in the early universe as a cold thermal relic (a weakly-interacting massive particle-WIMP), its present abundance, its scattering with matter in direct-detection experiments, its…
Astrophysical observations indicate that about 23% of the energy density of the universe is in the form of non-baryonic particles beyond the standard model of particle physics. One exciting and well motivated candidate is the lightest…
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are the missing link between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes, widely believed to reside in at least some dense star clusters, but not yet observed directly. Tidal disruptions of white dwarfs…
Neutron stars offer powerful astrophysical laboratories to probe the properties of dark matter. Gradual accumulation of heavy, non-annihilating dark matter in neutron stars can lead to the formation of comparable-mass black holes, and…
The combination of S-matrix unitarity and the dynamics of thermal freeze-out for massive relic particles (denoted here simply by WIMPs) implies a lower limit on the density of such particles, that provide a (potentially sub-dominant)…
Multiple astrophysical and cosmological observations show that the majority of the matter in the universe is non-luminous. It is not made of known particles, and it is called dark matter. This is one of the few pieces of concrete…
Dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles is predicted to become gravitationally captured and accumulate in stars. While the subsequent annihilations of such particles lead to the injection of energy into stellar…
The abnormally fast orbital decay observed in the black hole (BH) Low-Mass X-ray binaries (BH-LMXB) A0620-00 and XTE J1118+480 can be explained by the dynamical friction between Dark Matter (DM) and the companion star orbiting around the…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are a viable candidate for the relic abundance of dark matter (DM) produced in the early universe. So far WIMPs have eluded direct detection through interactions with baryonic matter. Neutrino…
The presence of dark matter (DM) is suggested by a wealth of astrophysical and cosmological measurements. However, its underlying nature is yet unknown. Among the most promising candidates are weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs):…
Several ideas for new physics beyond the standard model may provide particle candidates for the dark matter in the Galactic halo. The two leading candidates are an axion and a weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP), such as the…
We have proposed that the first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the Universe may be Dark Stars (DS), powered by dark matter heating rather than by nuclear fusion, and in this paper we examine the history of these DS. The power…
If dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), annihilation of WIMPs in the galactic center may lead to an observable enhancement of high energy gamma ray fluxes. We predict the shape and normalization of the…
The annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles can provide an important heat source for the first (Pop. III) stars, potentially leading to a new phase of stellar evolution known as a "Dark Star". When dark matter (DM) capture via…
Capture and annihilation of WIMP-like dark matter in red giant stars can lead to faster-than-expected ignition of the helium core, and thus a lower tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) luminosity. We use Gaia data to place constraints on the…
Simple models of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) predict dark matter annihilations into pairs of electroweak gauge bosons, Higgses or tops, which through their subsequent cascade decays produce a spectrum of gamma rays.…
Recent work has indicated that WIMP annihilation in stellar cores has the potential to contribute significantly to a star's total energy production. We report on progress in simulating the effects of WIMP capture and annihilation upon…
We investigate a new type of dark matter with couplings to ordinary matter naturally suppressed by at least one order of magnitude compared to weak interactions. Despite the extra-weak interactions massive particles of this type (XWIMPs)…