Effects of dark matter in red giants

Abstract

Dark matter (DM) which constitutes five-sixths of all matter is hypothesized to be a weakly interacting non-baryonic particle, created in the early stages of cosmic evolution. It can affect various cosmic structures in the Universe via gravitational interactions. The effect of DM in main sequence stars and stellar remnants like neutron stars and white dwarfs has already been studied. Red giant phase is a late stage of the evolution of stars. In this work, we study, low-mass red giants stars with admixture of DM and how this can effectively change the intrinsic properties of red giants such as their luminosities, temperatures and lifetimes.