Astrochemistry

Influence of Dark Matter on the Formation of Biogenic Elements in Early Universe Stars

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
astro-ph.SR
May 27, 2025
Filed under , , , , , ,
Influence of Dark Matter on the Formation of Biogenic Elements in Early Universe Stars
The early universe and its expansion. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

We demonstrate that dark matter interactions can profoundly influence stellar nucleosynthesis in the early universe by altering thermodynamic gradients and modifying nuclear reaction rates within primordial stars.

Incorporating a dark matter-modified Fermi-Dirac distribution and accounting for localized energy injection from annihilation heating, our model predicts enhanced production of carbon and nitrogen alongside reduced oxygen synthesis.

These compositional shifts significantly reshape stellar structure and produce synthetic spectra that closely reproduce the observed characteristics of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars.

Our findings reveal a direct and previously overlooked role of dark matter in driving the chemical evolution of the early cosmos, offering a plausible link between fundamental particle physics and observable astrophysical signatures.

L. Yildiz, D. Kayki, M. F. Ciappina

Comments: 5 pages, 4 figures
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); High Energy Physics – Phenomenology (hep-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2505.17522 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:2505.17522v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.17522
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Submission history
From: Marcelo Ciappina
[v1] Fri, 23 May 2025 06:26:06 UTC (1,673 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17522
Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻