Dark Matter Triggers of Supernovae
By P. Graham, S. Rajendran, J. Varela. 2015
209 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The transit of primordial black holes through a white dwarf causes localized heating around the trajectory of the black hole through dynamical friction. For sufficiently massive black holes, this heat can initiate runaway thermonuclear fusion causing the white dwarf to explode as a supernova. The shape of the observed distribution of white dwarfs with masses up to $1.25{M}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}}$ rules out primordial black holes with masses $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{19}--{10}^{20}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{gm}$ as a dominant constituent of the local dark matter density. Black holes with masses as large as ${10}^{24}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{gm}$ will be excluded if recent observations by the NuStar Collaboration of a population of white dwarfs near the galactic center are confirmed. Black holes in the mass range ${10}^{20}--{10}^{22}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{gm}$ are also constrained by the observed supernova rate, though these bounds are subject to astrophysical uncertainties. These bounds can be further strengthened through measurements of white dwarf binaries in gravitational wave observatories. The mechanism proposed in this paper can constrain a variety of other dark matter scenarios such as Q balls, annihilation/collision of large composite states of dark matter and models of dark matter where the accretion of dark matter leads to the formation of compact cores within the star. White dwarfs, with their astronomical lifetimes and sizes, can thus act as large spacetime volume detectors enabling a unique probe of the properties of dark matter, especially of dark matter candidates that have low number density. This mechanism also raises the intriguing possibility that a class of supernova may be triggered through rare events induced by dark matter rather than the conventional mechanism of accreting white dwarfs that explode upon reaching the Chandrasekhar mass.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/188d6323740620310d58b81c54ee7f60d08cc635
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Astronomy and Astrophysics
In Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Citations in the corpus
- Constraints on Earth-mass primordial black holes from OGLE 5-year microlensing events (2019, background): “[23] recently pointed out that a finite-source size effect of the gamma-ray burst progenitor significantly relaxes or even removes the constraint), supernovae of white dwarfs triggered by PBH [24], PBH capture by neutron stars [25,26], microlensing constraints [27–30], caustics-network lensing in th”
- Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Recent Developments (2020, background): “[179] argue that the transit of a PBH through a white dwarf (WD) causes localised heating through dynamical friction and initiates runaway thermonuclear fusion, causing the WD to explode as a supernova.”
- Generating PBHs and small-scale GWs in two-field models of inflation (2020, background): “We do not show constraints from long-livedness of white dwarfs (WD) [86], the presence of neutron stars in globular clusters around M ∼ 10−13M [87] and femtolensing around M ∼ 10−15M [88] since they have been contested in the literature, see e.”
- Primordial Black Holes from Polynomial Potentials in Single Field Inflation (2017, unknown): “These constraints arise from extragalactic γ-rays from evaporation and consistency of big-bang nucleosynthesis [54], femtolensing of γ-ray bursts [55], white-dwarf explosions [56], microlensing [57–60], and accretion effects [61] (see Ref.”
- Single field double inflation and primordial black holes (2017, background): “The strictest bounds arise from the black hole evaporation [38, 74, 75], femtolensing [76], microlensing [77–80], energy injection during the CMB era by black hole accretion [81–84], neutron star capture [85], white dwarf explosions [86], survival of stars in dwarf galaxies [87, 88], distribution of”
- Revisiting constraints on asteroid-mass primordial black holes as dark matter candidates (2019, methodology): “The relevant constraints are from the femtolensing and picolensing of GRBs; microlensing of stars in M31 [62]; the dynamical capture of PBHs by stars, including neutron stars (NS) and white dwarfs (WD) [72–75]; and WD survival since passage of a PBH could ignite carbon fusion and destroy the WD [76]”
- Primordial black holes and gravitational waves from parametric amplification of curvature perturbations (2019, background): “Here the constraints are from the extragalactic gamma ray background (EGγ [12]), galactic 511 keV line (e [87–89]), white dwarf explosions (WD [90], see [91] for criticism), gravitational lensing events (HSC [92], EROS [93], OGLE [94]), dynamical effects (SEGUE [95]), and cosmic microwave background”
- Femtolensing by dark matter revisited (2018, methodology): “Other bounds are based on the existence of old neutron stars [14–17] and white dwarfs [18] that would be destroyed if PBHs were abundant.”
- Primordial black holes as dark matter candidates (2021, background): “[134] argue that the transit of a PBH through a white dwarf (WD) causes the WD to explode as a supernova, excluding 1019 – 1020 g PBHs from providing the dark matter.”