Capture of Leptophilic Dark Matter in Neutron Stars

Understand

Dark matter particles will be captured in neutron stars if they undergo scattering interactions with nucleons or leptons.

• These collisions transfer the dark matter kinetic energy to the star, resulting in appreciable heating that is potentially observable by forthcoming infrared telescopes.
• While previous work considered scattering only on nucleons, neutron stars contain small abundances of other particle species, including electrons and muons.
• We perform a detailed analysis of the neutron star kinetic heating constraints on leptophilic dark matter.