Dark mechanism for nucleation inside old neutron stars

Neutron stars are objects where matter and fields can be tested to the extreme. In their interior, ordinary matter with a majority of nucleons (N) may coexist with a component of exotic matter that constitutes the so-called dark matter. It is believed that this latter type of matter constitutes nearly 80% of all mater in the currently accepted cosmological paradigm for our Universe. Popular candidates for such a kind of matter belong to extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. In this contribution we discuss the impact of a component of self-annihilating fraction of dark matter (chi.) that may be present in the star. We focus on the microscopics of the energy deposit arising from the annihilation process chi chi -> N gamma. in the dense core of a NS. We show that even if a tiny portion of matter inside the NS is dark matter it may trigger critical changes in the equation of state (EoS) of regular hadronic stars, provided its mass, m(chi), and crosssection scattering off nucleons, sigma(chi N), resides in a suitable allowed region of the dark parameter phase space.