New results on the two-body decay of neutrons shed new light on neutron stars

Abstract

In attempts to resolve the neutron lifetime puzzle, there was suggested a hypothetical decay of neutrons into some unspecified dark matter (DM) particles. Later there were performed studies on how the hypothetical decay of neutrons would affect neutron stars. Recently it was shown that with the allowance for the second solution of Dirac equation for hydrogen atoms, the theoretical branching ratio (BR) for the two-body decay of neutrons (compared to their three-body decay) is amplified by a factor of 3300 from 0.000004. So, the BR becomes about 1.3% in the excellent agreement with the “experimental” BR = (1.15 ± 0.27)% required for reconciling the two distinct experimental values of the neutron lifetime: one from the beam experiments, another from the trap experiments. This meant that the two-body decay of neutrons in the beam experiments (that count only the protons) plays a much more sizable part in the overestimation of the lifetime of neutrons in these experiments than previously thought. Hydrogen atoms corresponding to the second solution of Dirac equations are called the second flavor of hydrogen atoms (SFHA) by the analogy with the flavors of quarks. The existence of the SFHA is evidenced by four different types of atomic/molecular experiments. The primary feature of the SFHA is that due to having only the s-states, they do not emit or absorb the electromagnetic radiation (except for the 21 cm line): they are practically dark. The SFHA became a candidate for a part of DM for the first time after the SFHA-based successful qualitative and quantitative explanation of the perplexing observation by Bowman et al. of the anomalous absorption in the redshifted 21 cm line from the early Universe. In the present paper we analyzed how this neutron decay into the SFHA affects neutron stars. We showed that old neutron stars could very slowly generate the new specific, described in detail baryonic DM in the form of the SFHA. Some old neutron stars would release it into their tiny atmospheres, while some other old neutron stars would release it into the interstellar medium. Besides, mergers of a neutron star with another neutron star or with a black hole, accompanied by the ejection of neutron-rich material, can also lead to the formation of SFHA as the ejecta cools down. This is another interesting aspect of the multi-messenger astronomy focused on studying these mergers through the gravitational waves they generate. These mechanisms of generating new baryonic DM in the universe should have the fundamental importance. We point out the indirect observational evidence of the continuing generation of new baryonic DM. We hope that our results will stimulate a further research in this direction.