Seminarium "Teoria cząstek elementarnych i kosmologia"

Due to their extreme high density conditions, compact stars offer the possibility to be used as huge dark matter detectors. Surrounding dark matter may be attracted and get captured in the interior of these stars, potentially heating cold neutron stars or white dwarfs up to observable temperatures, above their expected temperature. Dark matter may also be boosted from sources like AGNs and that flux may also impact and heat compact stars.These detection mechanisms are particularly relevant for models and regions in parameter space of dark matter where direct detection experiments cannot set competitive bounds. As an example, we will present a lepton flavor violating model of fermionic dark matter, using old neutron stars as detectors. We will consider a pseudoscalar mediator (ALP) and study the process of capturing through inelastic interactions of the form: χ μ→χ e and χ e→χ μ, where χ is the dark matter fermion particle.

SLIDES