https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201921905006
Neutron decay, dark matter and neutron stars
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL 61801, USA
a e-mail: dhbeck@illinois.edu
Published online: 12 December 2019
Following up on a suggestion that decay to a dark matter fermion might explain the 4σ discrepancy in the neutron lifetime, we consider the implications of such a fermion on neutron star structure. We find that including it reduces the maximum neutron star mass to well below the observed masses. In order to recover stars with the observed masses, the (repulsive) self-interactions of the dark fermion would have to be stronger than those of the nucleon-nucleon interaction.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2019
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
