Thermodynamic Consistent Description of Compact Stars of Two Interacting Fluids: The Case of Neutron Stars with Higgs Portal Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper develops a thermodynamically consistent model for neutron stars containing dark matter, analyzing how dark matter properties influence star structure, mass, radius, and deformability, with implications for star mergers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel thermodynamic approach to model two interacting fluids in neutron stars, incorporating Higgs portal dark matter effects in a consistent manner.

Findings

Dark matter presence reduces neutron star mass and radius.

Mass-radius curves depend on dark matter particle mass.

Smaller tidal deformabilities are observed with dark matter inclusion.

Abstract

We consider a thermodynamically consistent approach for the computation of the masses, radii, and tidal deformabilities of compact stars consisting of two interacting fluids with separately conserved quantum numbers. We apply this interacting fluid approach to the case of compact stars of neutron star matter with the Higgs portal fermionic dark matter model for the first time in a thermodynamically consistent manner. The patterns for the mass-radius curves and the tidal deformability depend on the dark matter particle mass and are different from former studies. Compared to ordinary neutron star properties, we obtain smaller masses and radii for dark matter particle masses similar to the nucleon mass and, hence, smaller tidal deformabilities as a result of the softening of the equation of state due to the presence of dark matter. For dark matter particle masses below the nucleon mass and sizable chemical potentials with respect to the dark matter particle mass, there will be a dark halo instead of dark core. Our investigation provides the basis for studying mergers of compact stars where the two fluids of neutron star matter and dark matter are coupled kinetically to each other and are described by one combined energy-momentum tensor of the two interacting fluids but are chemically different with two separately conserved number currents.