2010/04/05 by Chris Kouvaris, Peter Tinyakov · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.GA #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.82.063531
published as Phys.Rev.D82:063531,2010 · 20 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2010/04/05 · arxiv updated 2014/11/20
We argue that observations of old neutron stars can impose constraints on dark matter candidates even with very small elastic or inelastic cross section, and self-annihilation cross section. We find that old neutron stars close to the galactic center or in globular clusters can maintain a surface temperature that could in principle be detected. Due to their compactness, neutron stars can acrete WIMPs efficiently even if the WIMP-to-nucleon cross section obeys the current limits from direct dark matter searches, and therefore they could constrain a wide range of dark matter candidates.