Centre d'études et d'expertise sur les risques, l'environnement, la mobilité et l'aménagement

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We identify a largely model-independent signature of dark matter (DM) interactions with nucleons and electrons. DM in the local galactic halo, gravitationally accelerated to over half the speed of light, scatters against and deposits kinetic energy into neutron stars, heating them to infrared blackbody temperatures. The resulting radiation could potentially be detected by the James Webb Space Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope, or the European Extremely Large Telescope. This mechanism also produces optical emission from neutron stars in the galactic bulge, and x-ray emission near the galactic center because dark matter is denser in these regions. For GeV-PeV mass dark matter, dark kinetic heating would initially unmask any spin-independent or spin-dependent dark matter-nucleon cross sections exceeding 2×10^{-45}  cm^{2}, with improved sensitivity after more telescope exposure. For lighter-than-GeV dark matter, cross-section sensitivity scales inversely with dark matter mass because of Pauli blocking; for heavier-than-PeV dark matter, it scales linearly with mass as a result of needing multiple scatters for capture. Future observations of dark sector-warmed neutron stars could determine whether dark matter annihilates in or only kinetically heats neutron stars. Because inelastic interstate transitions of up to a few GeV would occur in relativistic scattering against nucleons, elusive inelastic dark matter like pure Higgsinos can also be discovered.

Dark matter may be discovered through its capture in stars and subsequent annihilation. It is usually assumed that dark matter is captured after a single scattering event in the star, however this assumption breaks down for heavy dark matter, which requires multiple collisions with the star to lose enough kinetic energy to become captured. We analytically compute how multiple scatters alter the capture rate of dark matter and identify the parameter space where the effect is largest. Using these results, we then show how multiscatter capture of dark matter on compact stars can be used to probe heavy m X TeV dark matter with remarkably small dark matter-nucleon scattering cross-sections. As one example, it is demonstrated how measuring the temperature of old neutron stars in the Milky Way's center provides sensitivity to high mass dark matter with dark matter-nucleon scattering cross-sections smaller than the xenon direct detection neutrino floor.

Observations by HAWC and Milagro have detected bright and spatially extended TeV γ-ray sources surrounding the Geminga and Monogem pulsars. We argue that these observations, along with a substantial population of other extended TeV sources coincident with pulsar wind nebulae, constitute a new morphological class of spatially extended TeV halos. We show that HAWCs wide field-of-view unlocks an expansive parameter space of TeV halos not observable by atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Under the assumption that Geminga and Monogem are typical middle-aged pulsars, we show that ten-year HAWC observations should eventually observe 37 +17 −13 middle-aged TeV halos that correspond to pulsars whose radio emission is not beamed towards Earth. Depending on the extrapolation of the TeV halo efficiency to young pulsars, HAWC could detect more than 100 TeV halos from mis-aligned pulsars. These pulsars have historically been difficult to detect with existing multiwavelength observations. TeV halos will constitute a significant fraction of all HAWC sources, allowing follow-up observations to efficiently find pulsar wind nebulae and thermal pulsar emission. The observation and subsequent multi-wavelength follow-up of TeV halos will have significant implications for our understanding of pulsar beam geometries, the evolution of PWN, the diffusion of cosmic-rays near energetic pulsars, and the contribution of pulsars to the cosmic-ray positron excess. I. INTRODUCTIONRecent observations by the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) [1], along with earlier results from Milagro [2], have detected diffuse TeV emission surrounding the Geminga and B0656+14 (hereafter referred to as Monogem [3]) pulsars. While it is difficult to constrain the exact morphology of this emission, both systems are well-fit by Gaussian distributions with an angular extension of ∼2 • . These observations are intriguing for several reasons. First, the short cooling times of very high energy electrons imply that even middle-aged pulsars accelerate e + e − to energies exceeding ∼50 TeV. Second, the angular size of these "TeV halos" indicates that the propagation of cosmic rays near pulsars is significantly more constrained than typical for the interstellar medium [4,5]. Third, the intensity of this emission indicates that a significant fraction of the total pulsar spin-down luminosity is converted into e + e − pairs, providing evidence in support of pulsar interpretations of the rising cosmic-ray *

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Baryon interactions with bosonic dark matter are constrained by the potential for dark matter-rich neutron stars to collapse into black holes. We consider the effect of dark matter self-interactions and dark matter annihilation on these bounds, and treat the evolution of the black hole after formation. We show that, for non-annihilating dark matter, these bounds extend up to m X ∼ 10 5−7 GeV, depending on the strength of self-interactions. However, these bounds are completely unconstraining for annihilating bosonic dark matter with an annihilation cross-section of σ a v 10 −38 cm 3 /s. Dark matter decay does not significantly affect these bounds. We thus show that bosonic dark matter accessible to near-future direct detection experiments must participate in an annihilation or self-interaction process to avoid black hole collapse constraints from very old neutron stars.