Abstract
Neutron stars capture dark matter efficiently. The kinetic energy transferred during capture heats old neutron stars in the local galactic halo to temperatures detectable by upcoming infrared telescopes. We derive the sensitivity of this probe in the framework of effective operators. For dark matter heavier than a GeV, we find that neutron star heating can set limits on the effective operator cutoff that are orders of magnitude stronger than possible from terrestrial direct detection experiments in the case of spin-dependent and velocity-suppressed scattering.
Highlights
Astrophysical and cosmological data imply the existence of dark matter (DM), but its particle properties remain hidden from terrestrial experiments
Contact operators are a useful parameterization of the underlying dynamics when the transfer momentum q is small, such as in direct detection experiments where DM scatters off target nuclei
[24] demonstrated that DM scattering alone may kinetically heat neutron stars to infrared temperatures that are detectable by next-generation infrared telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
Summary
Astrophysical and cosmological data imply the existence of dark matter (DM), but its particle properties remain hidden from terrestrial experiments. [24] demonstrated that DM scattering alone may kinetically heat neutron stars to infrared temperatures that are detectable by next-generation infrared telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We show that neutron star heating improves the reach on this parameter space by orders of magnitude compared to terrestrial direct detection. It accelerates dark matter of mass mχ to kinetic energies of ðγ − 1Þmχ ∼ 0.35mχ. In the absence of this mechanism, a neutron star older than 108 yr is expected to have cooled to a temperature that is Oð10Þ lower [25], meaning the “dark kinetic heating” signal from such stars is essentially free of internal backgrounds
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