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arXiv · 1805.07381

White Dwarfs as Dark Matter Detectors

Peter Graham·Ryan Janish·Vijay Narayan·Surjeet Rajendran·Paul Riggins
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Abstract

Dark matter that is capable of sufficiently heating a local region in a white dwarf will trigger runaway fusion and ignite a type Ia supernova. This was originally proposed in Graham et al. (2015) and used to constrain primordial black holes which transit and heat a white dwarf via dynamical friction. In this paper, we consider dark matter (DM) candidates that heat through the production of high-energy standard model (SM) particles, and show that such particles will efficiently thermalize the white dwarf medium and ignite supernovae. Based on the existence of long-lived white dwarfs and the observed supernovae rate, we derive new constraints on ultra-heavy DM which produce SM particles through DM-DM annihilations, DM decays, and DM-SM scattering interactions in the stellar medium. As a concrete example, we rule out supersymmetric Q-ball DM in parameter space complementary to terrestrial bounds. We put further constraints on DM that is captured by white dwarfs, considering the formation and self-gravitational collapse of a DM core which heats the star via decays and annihilations within the core. It is also intriguing that the DM-induced ignition discussed in this work provide an alternative mechanism of triggering supernovae from sub-Chandrasekhar, non-binary progenitors.

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Peter Graham, Ryan Janish, Vijay Narayan, Surjeet Rajendran, Paul Riggins. 2018-05-18. White Dwarfs as Dark Matter Detectors. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.98.115027

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