Celestial-Body Focused Dark Matter Annihilation Throughout the Galaxy

Understand

Indirect detection experiments typically measure the flux of annihilating dark matter (DM) particles propagating freely through galactic halos.

• We consider a new scenario where celestial bodies "focus" DM annihilation events, increasing the efficiency of halo annihilation.
• In this setup, DM is first captured by celestial bodies, such as neutron stars or brown dwarfs, and then annihilates within them.
• If DM annihilates to sufficiently long-lived particles, they can escape and subsequently decay into detectable radiation.