Dark stars at the Galactic centre - the main sequence

Understand

In regions of very high dark matter density such as the Galactic centre, the capture and annihilation of WIMP dark matter by stars has the potential to significantly alter their evolution.

• We describe the dark stellar evolution code DarkStars, and present a series of grids of WIMP-influenced stellar models for main sequence stars.
• We describe changes in which occur as a function of the rate of energy injection by WIMPs, for stars of 0.3-2.0 solar masses and metallicities Z = 0.0003-0.02.
• We show what rates of energy injection can be obtained using realistic orbital parameters for stars at the Galactic centre, including detailed consideration of the velocity and density profiles of dark matter.