Old neutron stars as a new probe of relic neutrinos and sterile neutrino dark matter

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the cooling and heating of old neutron stars caused by scattering with relic neutrinos and sterile neutrino dark matter could be observable, offering a new way to study these elusive particles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to detect relic neutrinos and sterile neutrino dark matter through their effects on neutron star thermal evolution, considering multiple physical effects.

Findings

Potential observability of relic neutrino-induced cooling with JWST

Sterile neutrino dark matter could cause detectable neutron star heating

Proposes a new astrophysical probe for dark matter and neutrino properties

Abstract

We study the kinetic cooling (heating) of old neutron stars due to coherent scattering with relic neutrinos (sterile neutrino dark matter) via Standard Model neutral-current interactions. We take into account several important physical effects, such as gravitational clustering, coherent enhancement, neutron degeneracy and Pauli blocking. We find that the anomalous cooling of nearby neutron stars due to relic neutrino scattering might actually be observable by current and future telescopes operating in the optical to near-infrared frequency band, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), provided there is a large local relic overdensity that is still allowed. Similarly, the anomalous heating of neutron stars due to coherent scattering with keV-scale sterile neutrino dark matter, could also be observed by JWST or future telescopes, which would probe hitherto unexplored parameter space in the sterile neutrino mass-mixing plane.