Dancing in the dark: probing Dark Matter through the dynamics of eccentric binary pulsars

TL;DR

This paper explores how eccentric binary pulsars interact with dark matter, revealing that orbital eccentricity enhances the detection of dark matter effects through modifications in orbital dynamics, especially in environments with ultralight scalar fields.

Contribution

It extends previous models to eccentric pulsar systems and demonstrates how their orbital dynamics are more sensitive to dark matter interactions, providing new avenues for dark matter detection.

Findings

Eccentricity amplifies dark matter effects on pulsar orbits.

Dark matter-driven dynamical friction modifies orbital periods.

Binary pulsars can serve as sensitive dark matter probes.

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of eccentric binary pulsars embedded in dark matter environments. While previous studies have primarily focused on circular orbits in collisionless dark matter halos, we extend this framework to eccentric systems and explore their interaction with ultralight scalar fields. Adopting a perturbative approach, we compute the modifications to the orbital period induced by dark matter-driven dynamical friction. Our results show that orbital eccentricity amplifies the imprints of non-vacuum environments on binary dynamics, underscoring the potential of such systems as sensitive probes for dark matter signatures.