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Thermalization and Annihilation of Dark Matter in Neutron Stars

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arxiv 2312.11892 v2 pith:HS7W6TKZ submitted 2023-12-19 hep-ph astro-ph.COastro-ph.HE

Thermalization and Annihilation of Dark Matter in Neutron Stars

classification hep-ph astro-ph.COastro-ph.HE
keywords darkmatterannihilationachievedcapture-annihilationequilibriumfindheating
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The capture of dark matter, and its subsequent annihilation, can heat old, isolated neutron stars. In order for kinetic heating to be achieved, the captured dark matter must undergo sufficient scattering to deposit its kinetic energy in the star. We find that this energy deposit typically occurs quickly, for most of the relevant parameter space. In order for appreciable annihilation heating to also be achieved, the dark matter must reach a state of capture-annihilation equilibrium in the star. We show that this can be fulfilled for all types of dark matter - baryon interactions. This includes cases where the scattering or annihilation cross sections are momentum or velocity suppressed in the non-relativistic limit. Importantly, we find that capture-annihilation equilibrium, and hence maximal annihilation heating, can be achieved without complete thermalization of the captured dark matter. For scattering cross sections that saturate the capture rate, we find that capture-annihilation equilibrium is typically reached on a timescale of less than $1$ year for vector interactions and $10^4$ years for scalar interactions.

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Cited by 11 Pith papers

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