Speaker
Description
his talk will address the impact of heavy dark matter (DM) captured in massive stars via scattering(s) with the star constituents. We focus on the first stars and use stellar evolution simulations to track down how DM capture evolves over time from the zero-age main sequence to the late metal-rich stages of stellar evolution. During the early hydrogen-helium-dominated phase, the capture process is well described by scattering with two targets. As a star evolves, metal production leads to the formation of a dense core surrounded by a lighter envelope, which significantly enhances the capture of ultra-heavy DM. We find that heavy DM would be able to thermalize and achieve capture-annihilation equilibrium within a massive star's lifetime for regions of the parameter space not excluded by direct detection. Our results highlight the dependence of DM capture on the stellar evolutionary stage, composition, and halo location, demonstrating that accurate modeling of massive stars is essential for constraining heavy DM with primordial stellar populations.