2015MNRAS.450L..71F

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are an emerging class of short and bright radio transients whose sources remain enigmatic. Within the Galactic Centre, the non-detection of pulsars within the inner ∼ 10pc has created a missing pulsar problem that has intensified with time. With all reserve, we advance the notion that the two problems could be linked by a common solution: the collapse of neutron stars (NS) due to capture and sedimentation of dark matter (DM) within their cores. Bramante & Linden showed that certain DM properties allow for rapid NS collapse within the high DM density environments near galactic centres while permitting NS survival elsewhere. Each DM-induced collapse could generate an FRB as the NS magnetosphere is suddenly expelled. This scenario could explain several features of FRBs: their short time scales, large energies, locally produced scattering tails, and high event rates. We predict that FRBs are localized to galactic centres, and that our own galactic centre harbours a large population of NS-mass (M ∼ 1.4M_☉) black holes. The DM-induced collapse scenario is intrinsically unlikely because it can only occur in a small region of allowable DM parameter space. However, if observed to occur, it would place tight constraints on DM properties.