Equipping compact stars with a dark matter femtoscope

Speaker: Jérôme Vandecasteele, Bielefeld

Abstract: Neutron stars are a formidable laboratory for dark matter searches, especially for asymmetric dark matter. For these candidates, over the lifetime of a neutron star, dark matter is captured, sinks, and accumulates at the center of the star. After enough DM has been captured to reach the "dark Chandrasekhar limit", the DM cloud collapses into a black hole and devours the neutron star, resulting into a solar mass black hole. This is a formidable signal for new physics, but has been, so far, only relevant for DM candidates with masses above tens of PeV. I will present a new collapse mechanism due to the existence of small, compactified extra-dimensions that dark matter is sensitive to. This mechanism can accommodate TeV-scale dark matter masses and scattering cross-section with neutrons as low as 10^-56 cm².

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/2980559069?pwd=irjWSRVb2LejlP1MBbomM2E42uWXz8.1.  If prompted for a passcode, please use “CPPC”.