[2025] Group Meeting

Dark Matter Triggers of Supernovae

by Sougata Ganguly

Asia/Seoul
CTPU seminar room (IBS)

CTPU seminar room

IBS

Description

I will review the paper arXiv: 1505.04444 and arXiv: 1906.05950 where the authors discussed the effect of localized heating around the trajectory of a primordial black hole (PBH) when it transits through a white dwarf. For sufficiently massive black holes, this heat can initiate runaway thermonuclear fusion causing the white dwarf to explode as a supernova. The shape of the observed distribution of white dwarfs with masses up to 1.25 M_{\odot} rules out primordial black holes with masses 1E19 gm - 1E20 gm as a dominant constituent of the local dark matter density. Black holes with masses as large as 1E24 gm will be excluded if the observations by the NuStar collaboration of a population of white dwarfs near the galactic center are confirmed. Black holes in the mass range 1E20 gm - 1E22 gm are also constrained by the observed supernova rate, though these bounds are subject to astrophysical uncertainties.