Capture rate of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in binary star systems

Abstract

Distribution of dark matter (DM) inside galaxies is not uniform. Near the central regions, its density is the highest. Then, it seems logical to suppose that, DM affects the physics of stars of central regions more than other regions. Besides, current stellar evolutionary models did not consider DM effects in their assumptions. To consider the DM effects, at first one must estimate how much DM a star contains. The capture rate (CR) of DM particles by individual stars was investigated before this study in the literature. In this work, we discuss how CR can be affected when stars are members of binary star systems (BSS), instead of studing them individualy.When a star is a member of a BSS, its speed changes periodically due to the elliptical motion around its companion star. In this work, we investigated CR by BSSs in different binary star system configurations. In the end, we discussed observational signatures that can be attributed to the DM effect in binary systems.