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  • Letter
  • Open Access

New probe of dark matter-baryon interactions in compact stellar systems

Yang Ma1,2,* and Zihui Wang3,†

  • *Contact author: yang.ma@uclouvain.be
  • †Contact author: zihui.wang@nyu.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 111, L061302 – Published 5 March, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.L061302

Abstract

We investigate the astrophysical consequences of an attractive long-range interaction between dark matter and baryonic matter. Our study highlights the role of this interaction in inducing dynamical friction between dark matter and stars, which can significantly influence the evolution of compact stellar systems. Using the star cluster in Eridanus II as a case study, we derive a new stringent upper bound on the interaction strength α˜≤314.5 for the interaction range λ=1  pc. This constraint is independent of the dark matter mass and can improve the existing model-independent limits on α˜ by a few orders of magnitude. Furthermore, we observe that the constraint is insensitive to the mass of the stellar system and the dark matter density in the stellar system as long as the system is dark matter dominated. This new approach can be applied to many other stellar systems, and we obtain comparable constraints from compact stellar halos observed in ultrafaint dwarf galaxies.

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Phys. Rev. D 111, L061302– Published 5 March, 2025
  • Received 25 August 2024
  • Accepted 18 February 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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