Dark Matter as a Possible Solution to the Multiple Stellar Populations Problem in Globular Clusters [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2106.03398


According to the classical view of globular clusters, stars inside globular clusters are evolved from the same giant molecular cloud. Then their stars’ chemical compositions must be the same. But recent photometric and spectroscopic studies of globular clusters reveal the presence of more-than-one stellar populations inside globular clusters. This finding challenges our classical view of globular clusters.
In this work, we investigated the possibility of solving multiple stellar populations problem in globular clusters using dark matter assumptions. We showed that the presence of dark matter inside globular clusters changes the physical parameters (e.g. chemical composition, luminosity, temperature, age, etc.) of stars inside them.
We supposed that dark matter distributed non-uniformly inside globular clusters. It means stars in high dark matter density environments (like the central region of globular clusters) are more affected by the presence of dark matter. Using this assumption, we showed that stars in different locations of globular clusters (corresponding to different dark matter densities) follow different evolutionary paths (e.g. on Hertzsprung-Russell diagram). We used this note to infer that the presence of dark matter inside globular clusters can be the reason for the multiple stellar populations.

Read this paper on arXiv…

E. Hassani and S. Mousavi
Tue, 8 Jun 21
19/86

Comments: 6 Pages, 3 Figures, 1 Table, Submitted to MNRAS Journal