Vortex Creep Heating vs. Dark Matter Heating in Neutron Stars

Understand

Dark matter particles captured in neutron stars deposit their energy as heat.

• This DM heating effect can be observed only if it dominates over other internal heating effects in NSs.
• In this work, as an example of such an internal heating source, we consider the frictional heating caused by the creep motion of neutron superfluid vortex lines in the NS crust.
• The luminosity of this heating effect is controlled by the strength of the interaction between the vortex lines and nuclei in the crust, which can be estimated from the many-body calculation of a high-density nuclear system as well as through the temperature observation of old NSs.