Abstract
Observations of white dwarfs in dark matter-rich environments can provide strong limits on the strength of dark matter interactions. Here we apply the recently improved formalism of the dark matter capture rate in white dwarfs to a general model in which dark matter interacts with the white dwarf ion components via a light scalar mediator. We compute the dark matter capture rate in the optically thin limit in a cold white dwarf from the globular cluster Messier. We then estimate the threshold cross section, which significantly varies as a function of the light scalar mediator mass ${m}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}$ in the range of $0.05{m}_{\ensuremath{\chi}}<{m}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}<{m}_{\ensuremath{\chi}}$ and becomes constant when ${m}_{\ensuremath{\phi}}>{m}_{\ensuremath{\chi}}$. We also show that the bounds obtained from the dark matter capture in a white dwarf from the globular cluster Messier 4 are complementary to direct detection experiments and particularly strong in the sub-GeV regime.
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