报告题目：Neutron Stars as Probes of Dark Sectors

报 告 人：Maxim Pospelov (University of Minnesota)

报告时间：2026年3月25日10：30

报告地点：物理楼W105

内容摘要：Neutron stars are born in violent supernova explosions, when the temperatures reach tens of MeV, replicating, in some aspects, the environment of the very early Universe. I investigate faintly interacting dark matter particles that get produced in the explosion and stay gravitationally bound to the newly born neutron star. I show that the late time annihilation of dark matter back to the Standard Model particles will lead to an additional source of heat generation that can be incompatible with observation of stars' surface temperatures. Thus, current observations of old neutron stars set uniquely nontrivial constraints on the space of dark matter models. I also consider constraints on heavy dark matter capture that turn neutron stars into black holes and show that the previously derived constraints apply to a much larger class of dark matter models.

报告人简介：Professor Maxim Pospelov received his PhD from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Russia in 1994. He is currently a Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota and a member of the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute. He also serves as a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022, Professor Pospelov is a world-leading expert in dark matter physics, with research focused on particle physics and high-energy theory.