Neutron stars with an agnostic Dark sector: Core and Halo configurations from a two-fluid approach

Abstract

The study of dark matter admixed neutron stars has the potential to advance our understanding of dark matter particle candidates. However, the large parameter space of dark matter particle masses restricts a systematic, model-independent study. In this analysis, we employ agnostic hadronic and dark matter equations of state to construct dark-matter-admixed neutron stars within a two-fluid formalism. Dark matter is characterised solely by its low-density equation of state and mass, and is modelled as a Fermi gas, while hadronic matter is anchored at low and high densities by chiral effective field theory and perturbative quantum chromodynamics calculations. A speed-of-sound parametrisation covers the intermediate density region for hadronic matter and the high-density region for dark matter, so the dark matter equation of state is constrained only by thermodynamic consistency, free from bias toward a softer or stiffer equation of state. Within this agnostic framework, we find that dark matter does not generically compactify the star: light dark matter forms extended halos that raise the tidal deformability, while heavy dark matter forms compact cores that lower it. Consequently, the dominant observational constraint shifts from gravitational-wave tidal deformability for light, halo-dominated models to NICER mass--radius data for heavy, core-dominated models. Using current data at $1σ$, we constrain the dark matter fraction to $f_{\mathrm{DM}} \lesssim 0.11$ for light dark matter. Being almost independent of any assumed dark-sector microphysics, our framework yields conservative, broadly applicable bounds on the dark-matter content of neutron stars. Neutron stars with similar masses but very different tidal deformabilities could be a smoking-gun signature of dark matter in Neutron stars.