Speaker
Description
Certain asymmetric dark matter candidates can accumulate in neutron star cores and trigger their collapse into low-mass black holes. If this process occurs in compact binaries, the Universe may contain distinct populations of binary neutron stars and low-mass binary black holes. Gravitational-wave observations can distinguish these populations through their tidal deformabilities, which vanish for black holes but are nonzero for neutron stars. In this talk, I will show how current and next-generation gravitational-wave detector networks, including Cosmic Explorer and the Einstein Telescope, can measure the relative abundances of these populations to infer the timescale for dark-matter-induced neutron star implosions. These measurements can in turn constrain the particle properties of dark matter, providing a novel connection between gravitational-wave astronomy and fundamental physics.