Low-mass stars within dense dark matter halos

Abstract

We studied the formation and evolution of low-mass stars within halos with high concentration of dark matter (DM) particles, using a highly sophisticated expression to calculate the rate at which DM particles are captured inside the star. For very high DM densities in the host halo (\rho_{\chi}>10^10 GeV cm^-3 for a 1 M_{\odot} star), we found that young stars stop sooner their gravitational collapse in the pre-Main Sequence phase, reaching states of equilibrium in which DM annihilation is their only source of energy. The lower effective temperature of these stars, which depends on the properties of the DM particles and DM halo, may be used as an alternative method to investigate the nature of DM.