Capture of Electroweak Multiplet Dark Matter in Neutron Stars

Understand

If dark matter has a sizable scattering cross section with nucleons, it can efficiently be captured by a neutron star.

• Its energy is then transferred to the neutron star as heat through the scattering and annihilation inside the star.
• This heating effect may be detectable via dedicated temperature observations of nearby old pulsars, providing an alternative method for dark matter searches.
• In this paper, we show that for electroweak multiplet dark matter this search strategy can probe the parameter region which is out of reach of future dark matter direct detection experiments.