Stellar archaeology and black widow pulsars

Many forms of dark matter might collect in or near stars. Although it may have little observable effect on the star itself, one way to find such dark matter would be to eliminate the rest of the star. In this letter we note that a statistically viable sample of millisecond pulsars may present a means of looking for excavated exotic matter at the cores of previously existing stars. The mass threshold of detectability using pulsar timing, 3 x 10-8 Msolar or less, would provide a much stronger constraint than previous considerations and is of astrophysical interest. (author)