Dark Matter Seeding in Neutron Stars

We present a mechanism that may seed compact stellar objects with stable lumps of quark matter, or {\it strangelets}, through the self-annihilation of gravitationally accreted WIMPs. We show that dark matter particles with masses above a few GeV may provide enough energy in the nuclear medium for quark deconfinement and subsequent strangelet formation. If this happens this effect may then trigger a partial or full conversion of the star into a strange star. We set a new limit on the WIMP mass in the few-GeV range that seems to be consistent with recent indications in dark matter direct detection experiments.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure. Prepared for 19th Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC 2011), Boston, USA 25-29 Jul 201