Analog
Lifer
(PhysOrg.com) -- Finding evidence for dark matter the unknown substance that theoretically makes up 23% of the universe has been one of the biggest challenges in modern cosmology. Several experiments are underway to detect dark matter candidates known as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) as they travel through the Earth. And experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are trying to produce WIMPs through proton beam collisions. Now in a new study, scientists have shown that feebly annihilating dark matter particles captured inside a star can provide an additional source of energy to the star, resulting in changes to its structure and appearance. Observing these stars could potentially offer scientists a tool to detect and analyze this kind of dark matter.
The scientists, Fabio Iocco who is currently at the Oskar Klein Center for CosmoParticle Physics in Stockholm; Marco Taoso, currently at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; Florent Leclercq of the University of Paris and Ecole Polytechnique ParisTech in Palaiseau, France; and Georges Meynet of the University of Geneva in Sauverny, Switzerland, have published their study in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
In their study, the researchers focused on a type of dark matter called asymmetric dark matter (ADM), which can be loosely categorized as WIMPs. Due to an asymmetry between ADM particles and their antiparticles, the ADM particles are nonannihilating or, at most, feebly annihilating. As a result of the low annihilation rate, it would be nearly impossible to detect ADM through the indirect methods commonly used for searching for annihilating dark matter candidates.
