Speaker
Description
We discuss the capture of dark matter in white dwarfs (WD), the most abundant stellar remnants, as complimentary to terrestrial searches. We consider the capture of DM due to interactions with either ion or the degenerate electron component of WDs. For the discussion of the capture rate we account for the stellar structure, the star opacity, realistic nuclear form factors and temperature effects. In the case of ions we use a Maxwell Boltzmann distribution while for the degenerated electrons, we require a formalism that properly incorporates Pauli blocking and a relativistic treatment for electrons. We also discuss the dark matter evaporation rate. The DM interactions can be constrained by comparing the heating rate, due to the presence of DM in the star nucleus, with observatons of cold WDs. We have calculated the capture rate and applied this technique to observed WDs in the Messier 4 (M4) globular cluster.
