Baryon interactions with bosonic dark matter are constrained by the potential for dark-matter-rich neutron stars to collapse into black holes. We consider the effect of dark matter self-interactions and dark matter annihilation on these bounds, and treat the evolution of the black hole after formation. We show that, for nonannihilating dark matter, these bounds extend up to $m_X\sim {10}^{5–7}\mathrm{GeV}$, depending on the strength of self-interactions. However, these bounds are completely unconstraining for annihilating bosonic dark matter with an annihilation cross section of $⟨{\sigma }_{a}v⟩\gtrsim {10}^{-38}{\mathrm{cm}}^3/\mathrm{s}$. Dark matter decay does not significantly affect these bounds. We thus show that bosonic dark matter accessible to near-future direct detection experiments must participate in an annihilation or self-interaction process to avoid black hole collapse constraints from very old neutron stars.

• Received 7 February 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.87.055012