Open Access

Cédric Jockel, Laura Sagunski

• Dark matter could accumulate around neutron stars in sufficient amounts to affect their global properties. In this work, we study the effect of a specific model for dark matter—a massive and self-interacting vector (spin-1) field—on neutron stars. We describe the combined systems of neutron stars and vector dark matter using Einstein–Proca theory coupled to a nuclear matter term and find scaling relations between the field and metric components in the equations of motion. We construct equilibrium solutions of the combined systems, compute their masses and radii, and also analyze their stability and higher modes. The combined systems admit dark matter (DM) core and cloud solutions. Core solutions compactify the neutron star component and tend to decrease the total mass of the combined system. Cloud solutions have the inverse effect. Electromagnetic observations of certain cloud-like configurations would appear to violate the Buchdahl limit. This could make Buchdahl-limit-violating objects smoking gun signals for dark matter in neutron stars. The self-interaction strength is found to significantly affect both mass and radius. We also compare fermion Proca stars to objects where the dark matter is modeled using a complex scalar field. We find that fermion Proca stars tend to be more massive and geometrically larger than their scalar field counterparts for equal boson masses and self-interaction strengths. Both systems can produce degenerate masses and radii for different amounts of DM and DM particle masses.