Probes of dark matter with neutron stars and their mergers in light of the next-generation gravitational wave detectors

by Violetta Sagun (University of Coimbra, Portugal)

Thursday 28 Mar 2024, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Warsaw

4402 (IFJ PAN)

Compact stars due to their enormous gravitational field can accumulate a sizable amount of dark matter in their interior. Depending on its nature, accumulated dark matter may affect the properties of neutron stars in quite different ways. I will give an overview of the impact of dark matter on various observable properties of neutron stars, i.e. the mass-radius relation, tidal deformability, merger dynamics, gravitational waveform, thermal evolution, etc. For two scenarios, asymmetric fermionic and bosonic dark matter, the conditions at which dark matter particles tend to condense in the core of the star or create an extended halo will be presented. I will show how dark matter condensed in a core tends to decrease the total gravitational mass and tidal deformability compared to a pure baryonic star, which appears as an effective softening of the equation of state. On the other hand, the presence of a dark matter halo has the opposite effect, causing an increase in those observable quantities. Thus, observational data on compact stars could be affected by accumulated dark matter and, consequently, constraints we put on the strongly interacting matter at high densities.

In addition, I will review the effect of dark matter on binary neutron star mergers and emitted gravitational wave signals. I will present the numerical-relativity simulations of compact stars admixed with the dark matter component and discuss how the ongoing and future X-ray, radio, and gravitational wave observations could shed light on dark matter admixed compact stars and put multi-messenger constraints on the corresponding effect. A special emphasis will be given to the next-generation gravitational wave detectors.