Rotating Neutron Stars with Dark Matter Halos

Abstract

If dark matter (DM) exists in halos around rotating neutron stars (NSs), it will be essential to understand the effects of rotation on the distribution of DM and baryonic matter (BM) in the stars to interpret observations. In this work, we construct rapidly rotating dark matter admixed neutron stars (DANS) with DM halos using the two-fluid approximation, where the BM and DM interact only through gravity. Our goal is to describe rapidly rotating millisecond-period DANS spun up by the accretion of BM from a zero angular momentum state. We extend the Rapidly Rotating Neutron Star (RNS) code to compute axisymmetric configurations in which the BM rotates rigidly while the DM remains torque-free and differentially rotates through the frame-dragging of spacetime. For the first time, we examine in detail local and global definitions of mass in general relativity for two-fluid systems, showing how their differences affect the interpretation of baryonic and dark component masses. We compute energy density and frame-dragging frequency profiles for DANS with three different characteristic DM halos. We demonstrate that rapid BM rotation reduces DM halo sizes if central energy densities are kept constant between non-rotating and rotating models. We also construct sequences of DANS to create mass and radius curves and compare rotating and non-rotating cases. Finally, we quantify deviations in the spacetime metric outside the baryonic surfaces of these sequences of stars caused by the DM halos. We hypothesize that the size of this quantity could indicate whether a DM halo will significantly impact X-ray pulse profile modeling. These results provide a framework for assessing the observational consequences of DM halos around rapidly rotating NSs.