I will discuss dark neutron stars in a class of 'mirror dark matter' models where the dark sector is a copy of the (minimal supersymmetric) standard model, but with the important difference that the dark supersymmetry-breaking scale is much higher than in the visible sector. An interesting feature of this model is that aside from all the dark particles being much heavier in general, the quark mass hierarchy can be different from the visible sector, resulting in the dark neutron being the stable nucleon, while the dark proton undergoes an analogous version of beta decay. This means the dark sector will not have all the rich chemistry of the visible sector, but it will form neutron stars. I will present some unpublished results in this model on the cosmological formation of these dark neutron stars from early universe fluctuations, as well as their basic properties and potential observational signatures.
Organized by: Catarina Cosme