2014/12/31 by Jim Fuller, Christian Ott · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slv049
published as 2015, MNRAS, L71-L75 · Published in MNRAS Letters
arxiv created 2015/04/29 · arxiv updated 2015/04/30
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are an emerging class of short and bright radio transients whose sources remain enigmatic. Within the galactic center, the non-detection of pulsars within the inner ∼ 10 \rm pc has created a missing pulsar problem that has intensified with time. With all reserve, we advance the notion that the two problems could be linked by a common solution: the collapse of neutron stars (NS) due to capture and sedimentation of dark matter (DM) within their cores. Bramante & Linden (2014), Phys. Rev. Lett.~19, 191301 showed that certain DM properties allow for rapid NS collapse within the high DM density environments near galactic centers while permitting NS survival elsewhere. Each DM-induced collapse could generate an FRB as the NS magnetosphere is suddenly expelled. This scenario could explain several features of FRBs: their short time scales, large energies, locally produced scattering tails, and high event rates. We predict that FRBs are localized to galactic centers, and that our own galactic center harbors a large population of NS-mass (M∼1.4 M_\odot) black holes. The DM-induced collapse scenario is intrinsically unlikely because it can only occur in a small region of allowable DM parameter space. However, if observed to occur, it would place tight constraints on DM properties.