Neutron Star Stability in Light of the Neutron Decay Anomaly

Understand

A recent proposal suggests that experimental discrepancies on the lifetime of neutrons can be resolved if neutrons decay to dark matter.

• At the same time it has been demonstrated that such a decay mode would soften the nuclear equation of state resulting in neutron stars with a maximum mass much below currently observed ones.
• In this paper we demonstrate that appropriate dark matter-baryon interactions can accommodate neutron stars with mass above 2 solar masses.
• We also show that dark matter self-interactions could also help neutrons stars reach 2 solar masses provided that dark matter is of asymmetric nature.