Dark Matter Burners

We show that a star orbiting close enough to an adiabatically grownsupermassive black hole (SMBH) can capture weakly interacting massive particles(WIMPs) at an extremely high rate. The stellar luminosity due to annihilationof captured WIMPs in the stellar core may be comparable to or even exceed theluminosity of the star due to thermonuclear burning. The model thus predictsthe existence of unusual stars, essentially WIMP burners, in the vicinity of aSMBH. We find that the most efficient WIMP burners are stars with degenerateelectron cores, e.g. white dwarfs (WDs); such WDs may have a very high surfacetemperature. If found, such stars would provide evidence for the existence ofparticle dark matter and can possibly be used to establish its density profile.On the other hand, the lack of such unusual stars may provide constraints onthe WIMP density near the SMBH, as well as the WIMP-nucleus scattering and pairannihilation cross-sections.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, emulateapj.cls; Astrophysical Journal Letters, accepte