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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06506 |
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| _version_ | 1866915570726731776 |
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| author | Bell, Nicole F. Busoni, Giorgio Ghosh, Avirup |
| author_facet | Bell, Nicole F. Busoni, Giorgio Ghosh, Avirup |
| contents | Kinetic heating of old cold neutron stars, via the scattering of dark matter with matter in the star, provides a promising way to probe the nature of dark matter interactions. We consider a dark matter candidate that is a Standard Model singlet Dirac fermion, charged under a $U(1)_{L_μ-L_τ}$ symmetry. Such dark matter interacts with quarks and electrons only via loop-induced couplings, and hence is weakly constrained by direct-detection experiments and cosmic-microwave background observations. However, tree-level interactions with muons enable the dark matter to interact efficiently with the relativistic muon component of a neutron star, heating the star substantially. Using a fully relativistic approach for dark matter capture in the star, we show that observations of old cold neutron stars can probe a substantial, yet unexplored, region of parameter space for dark matter masses in the range 100 MeV - 100 GeV. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_06506 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Using neutron stars to probe dark matter charged under a $L_μ-L_τ$ symmetry Bell, Nicole F. Busoni, Giorgio Ghosh, Avirup High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Kinetic heating of old cold neutron stars, via the scattering of dark matter with matter in the star, provides a promising way to probe the nature of dark matter interactions. We consider a dark matter candidate that is a Standard Model singlet Dirac fermion, charged under a $U(1)_{L_μ-L_τ}$ symmetry. Such dark matter interacts with quarks and electrons only via loop-induced couplings, and hence is weakly constrained by direct-detection experiments and cosmic-microwave background observations. However, tree-level interactions with muons enable the dark matter to interact efficiently with the relativistic muon component of a neutron star, heating the star substantially. Using a fully relativistic approach for dark matter capture in the star, we show that observations of old cold neutron stars can probe a substantial, yet unexplored, region of parameter space for dark matter masses in the range 100 MeV - 100 GeV. |
| title | Using neutron stars to probe dark matter charged under a $L_μ-L_τ$ symmetry |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06506 |