The effect of dark matter on stars at the Galactic center: The paradox of youth problem

Abstract

Stars that evolve near the Galactic massive black hole show strange behaviors. The spectroscopic features of these stars show that they must be old. But their luminosities are much higher than the amounts that are predicted by the current stellar evolutionary models, which means that they must be active and young stars. In fact, this group of stars shows signatures of old and young stars, simultaneously. This is a paradox known as the “paradox of youth problem” (PYP). Some people tried to solve the PYP without supposing dark matter (DM) effects on stars. But, in this work, we implemented Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) annihilation as a new source of energy inside such stars. This implementation is logical for stars that evolve at high DM density environments. The new source of energy causes stars to follow different evolutionary paths on the H-R diagram in comparison with classical stellar evolutionary models. Increasing DM density in stellar evolutionary simulations causes the deviations from the standard H-R diagrams becomes more pronounced. By investigating the effects of WIMPs density on stellar structures and evolutions, we concluded that by considering DM effects on stars at the Galactic center, it is possible to solve the PYP. In addition to DM effect, complete solutions to PYP must consider all extreme and unique physical conditions that are present near the Galactic massive black hole.