"The Converted Pulsar"

The Galactic Center should contain many radio pulsars. Neutron stars are produced abundantly in the dense stellar environment near Sagittarius A*, and pulsars are just magnetized neutron stars emitting radio beams. Yet systematic searches find far fewer than expected. The pulsar deficit has stood as an open problem for years.

Separately, mysterious G objects — compact infrared sources on highly eccentric orbits around the supermassive black hole — resist conventional explanation. They look like dust-enshrouded stellar objects but behave anomalously during close encounters with Sgr A*.

One mechanism explains both.

If primordial black holes exist within the dark matter halo concentrated at the Galactic Center, they can be captured by neutron stars. A primordial black hole settling into a neutron star's interior would accrete the star from the inside out, converting it into a low-mass black hole surrounded by remnant debris. The resulting object — a small black hole wrapped in an expanding envelope of neutron star material — would appear as precisely the kind of compact, dusty infrared source that G objects are.

The model connects the G-object population to the neutron star birth rate, dark matter density profile, and primordial black hole mass distribution. The pulsar deficit and the G-object population become related consequences of the same conversion process: the primordial black holes are eating the pulsars and leaving G objects behind.

The predictions span infrared, radio, X-ray, and microlensing wavelengths — each probing a different stage of the conversion. Testable signatures from a single mechanism explaining two independent puzzles.