Dark Matter and The First Stars (Dr. Douglas Spolyar, FNAL)

by Dr Douglas Spolyar (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

Tuesday Nov 17, 2009, 3:30 PM → 5:00 PM Pacific/Honolulu

Rm 112 (UHM - Watanabe Hall)

The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the Universe may be Dark Stars (DS), powered by dark matter heating rather than by nuclear fusion. The power source is annihilation of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) which are their own antiparticles. These WIMPs are the best motivated dark matter (DM) candidates and may be discovered by ongoing direct or indirect detection searches (e.g. FERMI /GLAST) or at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. A new stellar phase results, powered by DM annihilation as long as there is DM fuel, from millions to billions of years. These stars look dramatically different from typical pop. III stars and may dramatically alter the early history of the universe.