Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 688, Issue 1, Pages L1-L4Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1086/593976
Keywords
dark matter; early universe; stars: evolution; stars: rotation
Categories
Funding
- Department of Energy
- SLAC [DE-AC3-76SF00515]
- MIUR
- DOE SciDAC Program [DE-FC0206ER41438]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Recent theoretical studies have revealed the possibly important role of the capture and annihilation process of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) for the first stars. Using new evolutionary models of metal-free massive stars, we investigate the impact of such dark matter burning for the first stars in different environments of dark matter (DM) halos, in terms of the ambient WIMP density (rho(chi)). We find that, in agreement with existing literature, stellar lifetimes can be significantly prolonged for a certain range of rho(chi) (i.e., 10(10) less than or similar to rho(chi)[Gev cm(-3)] less than or similar to 10(11) with the current upper limit for the spin-dependent elastic scattering cross section sigma(SD)(0) = 5 x 10(-39) cm(2)). This greatly enhances the role of rotationally induced chemical mixing in rotating stars, in favor of abundant production of primary nitrogen, massive helium stars, and long gamma-ray bursts, from the first stars. We also find that stars with rho(chi) > x 10(11) Gev cm(-3) may not undergo nuclear burning stages, confirming the previous work, and that ionizing photon fluxes from such DM supported stars are very weak. Delayed metal enrichment and slow reionization in the early universe would have resulted if most of the first stars had been born in DM halos with such high rho(chi), unless it had been lowered significantly below the threshold for efficient DM burning on a short timescale.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available