Low-mass stars within dense dark matter halos

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dense dark matter halos influence the formation and evolution of low-mass stars, revealing that high dark matter densities can halt stellar collapse and produce stars powered solely by dark matter annihilation, offering new observational probes.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed model of dark matter capture in low-mass stars and demonstrates how high dark matter densities alter stellar evolution, providing a novel approach to study dark matter properties.

Findings

Stars in high DM density halos stop their collapse earlier.

Dark matter annihilation can be the sole energy source in certain stars.

Lower effective temperatures depend on DM particle properties.

Abstract

We studied the formation and evolution of low-mass stars within halos with high concentration of dark matter (DM) particles, using a highly sophisticated expression to calculate the rate at which DM particles are captured inside the star. For very high DM densities in the host halo (\rho_{\chi}>10^10 GeV cm^-3 for a 1 M_{\odot} star), we found that young stars stop sooner their gravitational collapse in the pre-Main Sequence phase, reaching states of equilibrium in which DM annihilation is their only source of energy. The lower effective temperature of these stars, which depends on the properties of the DM particles and DM halo, may be used as an alternative method to investigate the nature of DM.