Evolution of the First Stars with Dark Matter Burning

Understand

Recent theoretical studies have revealed the possibly important role of the capture and annihilation process of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) for the first stars.

• Using new evolutionary models of metal-free massive stars, we investigate the impact of such ``dark matter burning'' for the first stars in different environments of dark matter (DM) halos, in terms of the ambient WIMP density (rho_chi).
• We find that, in agreement with existing literature, stellar life times can be significantly prolonged for a certain range of rho_\chi (i.e., 10^{10} ~ < \rho_\chi GeV/cm3 ~ < 10^{11} with the current upper limit for the spin-dependent elastic scattering cross section sigma = 5*10^{-39} cm2}).
• This greatly enhances the role of rotationally induced chemical mixing in rotating stars, in favor of abundant production of primary nitrogen, massive helium stars and long gamma-ray bursts, from the first stars.