Weekly seminars
Dark Stars: A new phase of stellar evolution
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Europe/Paris
Auditorium Vivargent (Annecy-le-Vieux)
Auditorium Vivargent
Annecy-le-Vieux
Description
Dark Stars are neither dark nor are they technically stars. Dark matter provides the power (not fusion). As a result dark stars are extremely luminous and cool. Dark matter becomes compressed, as gas cools and collapses inside of million solar mass halos to form the first stars. If dark matter is a WIMP (i.e. the LSP in SUSY), the WIMP can annihilate liberating energy to heat the gas and power a star. At sufficiently high densities the annihilation rate becomes large enough to halt the collapse of the gas forming a proto-star, which is powered by dark matter and grows to massive scales. Future observations with JWST may give a handle to at least constrain and potentially discover dark stars.