Dark Stars: A Review

Dark Stars are stellar objects made (almost entirely) of hydrogen and helium, but powered by the heat from Dark Matter annihilation, rather than by fusion. They are in hydrostatic and thermal equilibrium, but with an unusual power source. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), among the best candidates for dark matter, can be their own antimatter and can annihilate inside the star, thereby providing a heat source. Although dark matter constitutes only $lesssim 0.1%$ of the stellar mass, this amount is sufficient to power the star for millions to billions of years. Thus, the first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the Universe may have been dark stars. We review how dark stars come into existence, how they grow as long as dark matter fuel persists, and their stellar structure and evolution. The studies were done in two different ways, first assuming polytropic interiors and more recently using the MESA stellar evolution code; the basic results are the same. Dark stars are giant, puffy ($sim$ 10 AU) and cool (surface temperatures $sim$10,000 K) objects. We follow the evolution of dark stars from their inception at $sim 1 M_odot$ as they accrete mass from their surroundings to become supermassive stars, some even reaching masses $> 10^6 M_odot$ and luminosities $>10^{10} L_odot$, making them detectable with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Once the dark matter runs out and the dark star dies, it may collapse to a black hole; thus dark stars may provide seeds for the supermassive black holes observed throughout the Universe and at early times. Other sites for dark star formation may exist in the Universe today in regions of high dark matter density such as the centers of galaxies. The current review briefly discusses dark stars existing today, but focuses on the early generation of dark stars.

Negative running prevents eternal inflation

Current data from the Planck satellite and the BICEP2 telescope favor, at around the $2 sigma$ level, negative running of the spectral index of curvature perturbations from inflation. We show that for negative running $alpha < 0$, the curvature perturbation amplitude has a maximum on scales larger than our current horizon size. A condition for the absence of eternal inflation is that the curvature perturbation amplitude always remain below unity on superhorizon scales. For current bounds on $n_{rm S}$ from Planck, this corresponds to an upper bound of the running $alpha < - 4 times 10^{-5}$, so that even tiny running of the scalar spectral index is sufficient to prevent eternal inflation from occurring, as long as the running remains negative on scales outside the horizon. In single-field inflation models, negative running is associated with a finite duration of inflation: we show that eternal inflation may not occur even in cases where inflation lasts as long as $10^4$ e-folds.

Numerical Evidence for Dark Star Formation: A Comment on Weakly Interacting Massive Particle Dark Matter and First Stars: Suppression of Fragmentation in Primordial Star Formation by Smith et al. 2012, ApJ 761, 154

(abridged) This comment is intended to show that simulations by Smith et al. (S12) support the Dark Star (DS) scenario and even remove some potential obstacles. Our previous work illustrated that the initial hydrogen densities of the first equilibrium DSs are high, ~10^{17}/cm^3 for the case of 100 GeV WIMPs, with a stellar radius of ~2-3 AU. Subsequent authors have somehow missed the fact that equilibrium DSs have the high densities they do. S12 have numerically simulated the effect of dark matter annihilation on the contraction of a protostellar gas cloud en route to forming the first stars. They show results at a density ~5 10^{14}/cm^3, slightly higher than the value at which annihilation heating prevails over cooling. However, they are apparently unable to reach the ~10^{17}/cm^3 density of our hydrostatic DS solutions. We are in complete agreement with their physical result that the gas keeps collapsing to densities > 5 10^{14}/cm^3, as it must before equilibrium DSs can form. However we are in disagreement with some of the words in their paper which imply that DSs never come to exist. It seems to us that S12 supports the DS scenario. They use the sink particle approach to treat the gas that collapses to scales smaller than their resolution limit. We argue that their sink is effectively a DS, or contains one. An accretion disk forms as more mass falls onto the sink, and the DS grows. S12 not only confirm our predictions about DS in the range where the simulations apply, but also solve a potential obstruction to DS formation by showing that dark matter annihilation prevents the fragmentation of the collapsing gas. Whereas fragmentation might perturb the dark matter away from the DS and remove its power source, instead S12 show that further sinks, if any, form only far enough away as to leave the DS undisturbed in the comfort of its dark matter surroundings.

Gamma-Ray Constraints on the First Stars from Annihilation of Light WIMPs

We calculate the limits on the fraction of viable dark matter minihalos in the early universe to host Population III.1 stars, surviving today as dark matter spikes in our Milky Way halo. Motivated by potential hints of light dark matter from the DAMA and CoGeNT direct dark matter searches, we consider thermal relic WIMP dark matter with masses of 5, 10, and 20 GeV, and annihilation to mu^+ mu^-, tau^+ tau^-, and q bar{q}. From this brief study we conclude that, if dark matter is light, either the typical black hole size is lesssim 100 M_odot (i.e. there is no significant Dark Star phase), and/or dark matter annihilates primarily to mu^+ mu^- or other final states that result in low gamma-ray luminosity, and/or that an extremely small fraction of minihalos in the early universe that seem suitable to host the formation of the first stars actually did.

Predictive Signatures of Supersymmetry: Measuring the Dark Matter Mass and Gluino Mass with Early LHC data

We present a focused study of a predictive unified model whose measurable consequences are immediately relevant to early discovery prospects of supersymmetry at the LHC. ATLAS and CMS have released their analysis with 35~pb$^{-1}$ of data and the model class we discuss is consistent with this data. It is shown that with an increase in luminosity the LSP dark matter mass and the gluino mass can be inferred from simple observables such as kinematic edges in leptonic channels and peak values in effective mass distributions. Specifically, we consider cases in which the neutralino is of low mass and where the relic density consistent with WMAP observations arises via the exchange of Higgs bosons in unified supergravity models. The magnitudes of the gaugino masses are sharply limited to focused regions of the parameter space, and in particular the dark matter mass lies in the range $sim (50-65) ~rm GeV$ with an upper bound on the gluino mass of $575~{rm GeV}$, with a typical mass of $450~{rm GeV}$. We find that all model points in this paradigm are discoverable at the LHC at $sqrt s = 7 rm ~TeV$. We determine lower bounds on the entire sparticle spectrum in this model based on existing experimental constraints. In addition, we find the spin-independent cross section for neutralino scattering on nucleons to be generally in the range of $sigma^{rm SI}_{ a p} = 10^{-46 pm 1}~rm cm^2$ with much higher cross sections also possible. Thus direct detection experiments such as CDMS and XENON already constrain some of the allowed parameter space of the low mass gaugino models and further data will provide important cross-checks of the model assumptions in the near future.

Cascade Events at IceCube+DeepCore as a Definitive Constraint on the Dark Matter Interpretation of the PAMELA and Fermi Anomalies

Dark matter decaying or annihilating into mu+mu- or tau+tau- has been proposed as an explanation for the e+e- anomalies reported by PAMELA and Fermi. Recent analyses show that IceCube, supplemented by DeepCore, will be able to significantly constrain the parameter space of decays to mu+mu-, and rule out decays to tau+tau- and annihilations to mu+mu- in less than five years of running. These analyses rely on measuring track-like events in IceCube+DeepCore from down-going nu_mu. In this paper we show that by instead measuring cascade events, which are induced by all neutrino flavors, IceCube+DeepCore can rule out decays to mu+mu- in only three years of running, and rule out decays to tau+tau- and annihilation to mu+mu- in only one year of running. These constraints are highly robust to the choice of dark matter halo profile and independent of dark matter-nucleon cross-section.