Tidal capture of a primordial black hole by a neutron star: implications for constraints on dark matter
- CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Avenida Rovisco Pais 1, Lisboa, 1049 Portugal (Portugal)
- Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138 (United States)
In a close encounter with a neutron star, a primordial black hole can get gravitationally captured by depositing a considerable amount of energy into nonradial stellar modes of very high angular number l. If the neutron-star equation of state is sufficiently stiff, we show that the total energy loss in the point-particle approximation is formally divergent. Various mechanisms — including viscosity, finite-size effects and the elasticity of the crust — can damp high-l modes and regularize the total energy loss. Within a short time, the black hole is trapped inside the star and disrupts it by rapid accretion. Estimating these effects, we predict that the existence of old neutron stars in regions where the dark-matter density ρ{sub DM}∼>10{sup 2}(σ/km s{sup −1}) GeV cm{sup −3} (where σ is the dark-matter velocity dispersion) limits the abundance of primordial black holes in the mass range 10{sup 17} g∼
- OSTI ID:
- 22373525
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 06; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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