Kavli Affiliate: Edward Kolb
| Summary:
Magnetic monopoles are captured efficiently by neutron stars, and if they catalyze nucleon decay, the decay products would thermalize and generate observable X-ray surface emission. We use archival Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Swift-XRT data for old isolated millisecond pulsars to place conservative limits on the Galactic monopole flux ($F_M$). For a benchmark cross-section of $σ_Δrm B sim 10^-27 rm cm^2$, our constraint as a function of monopole mass $m_M$ is given by $F_rm M(m_M) lesssim 6 times 10^-19~mathrmcm^-2s^-1sr^-1 times max big(4 times 10^-6, min (2 times 10^11~mathrm(GeV/c^2)/m_rm M , 1 ) big)$. These limits improve previous neutron-star bounds, provide the strongest constraints to date on $F_M$ for $m_M$ between $10^11 – 10^13 rm GeV/c^2$, and are competitive to existing constraints for this scenario. We also derive complementary constraints from the measured thermal emission of the Magnificent Seven. Our results demonstrate that neutron star X-ray observations provide a powerful probe of magnetic monopoles and motivate dedicated X-ray searches for old neutron stars as a means to test monopole-induced heating.
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