Dark particle mass effects on neutron star properties from a short-range correlated hadronic model

TL;DR

This study explores how dark matter particles influence neutron star properties using a relativistic hadronic model with short-range correlations, aligning with recent astrophysical observations and suggesting dark matter's role in pulsar glitches.

Contribution

It introduces a novel RMF-SRC-DM model that incorporates dark matter effects into neutron star structure calculations, compatible with LIGO, Virgo, and NICER data.

Findings

Higher dark matter mass reduces neutron star crust mass and thickness.

Model aligns with gravitational wave and NICER observational constraints.

Dark matter content may explain pulsar glitch phenomena.

Abstract

In this work we study a relativistic mean-field (RMF) hadronic model, with nucleonic short-range correlations (SRC) included, coupled to dark matter (DM) through the Higgs boson. We study different parametrizations of this model by running the dark particle Fermi momentum, and its mass in the range of $50$ GeV $\leqslant M_\chi\leqslant 500$ GeV, compatible with experimental spin-independent scattering cross-sections. By using this RMF-SRC-DM model, we calculate some neutron star quantities, namely, mass-radius profiles, dimensionless tidal deformabilities, and crustal properties. Our findings show that is possible to construct RMF-SRC-DM parametrizations in agreement with constraints provided by LIGO and Virgo collaboration (LVC) on the GW170817 event, and recent observational data from the NICER mission. Furthermore, we show that the increase of $M_\chi$ favors the model to attain data from LVC regarding the tidal deformabilities. Higher values of $M_\chi$ also induce a reduction of the neutron star crust (mass and thickness), and cause a decrease of the crustal fraction of the moment of inertia ($I_{\rm{\tiny crust}}/I$). Nevertheless, we show that some RMF-SRC-DM parametrizations still exhibit $I_{\rm{\tiny crust}}/I>7\%$, a condition that explains the glitch activity in rotation-powered pulsars such as the Vela one. Therefore, dark matter content can also be used for describing such a phenomenon.