Related papers: Gravitational microlensing as a probe for dark mat…
(Abridged) Using the number and sizes of observed gravitational lenses, I derive upper limits on the dark matter content of elliptical galaxies. Galaxies built from Cold Dark Matter (CDM) mass distributions are too concentrated to…
Parametric strong lensing studies of galaxy clusters often display "misleading features". This is the case in the galaxy cluster Abell 370. Using strong lensing techniques, it has been described parametrically by a four dark matter clumps…
While the $\Lambda$CDM model succeeds on large scales, its validity on smaller scales remains uncertain. Recent works suggest that non-halo dark matter structures, such as filaments and walls, could significantly influence gravitational…
We investigate how observations of strong lensing can be used to infer cosmological parameters, in particular the equation of state of dark energy. We focus on the growth of the critical lines of lensing clusters with the source redshift as…
The analysis of optical images of galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lensing systems can provide important information about the distribution of dark matter at small scales. However, the modeling and statistical analysis of these images is…
After decades of searching, the true nature of dark matter still eludes us. One potential probe of the form of dark matter in galaxy clusters is to search for microlensing variability in the giant arcs and arclets. In this paper, a simple…
We model the formation, evolution and astrophysical effects of dark compact Scalar Miniclusters (``ScaMs''). These objects arise when a scalar field, with an axion-like or Higgs-like potential, undergoes a second order phase transition…
In the cold dark matter model of structure formation, galaxies are assembled hierarchically from mergers and the accretion of subclumps. This process is expected to leave residual substructure in the Galactic dark halo, including partially…
We study the effect of magnification in the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 analysis of galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing, using two different lens samples: a sample of Luminous red galaxies, redMaGiC, and a sample with a…
Magnification bias, an observational effect of gravitational lensing in the weak regime, allows testing the cosmological model through angular correlations of sources at different redshifts. This effect has been observed in various…
We use ray-tracing through the Millennium simulation to study how secondary matter structures along the line-of-sight and the stellar mass in galaxies affect strong cluster lensing, in particular the cross-section for giant arcs.…
In cold dark matter cosmological models, structures form and grow by merging of smaller units. Numerical simulations have shown that such merging is incomplete; the inner cores of halos survive and orbit as "subhalos" within their hosts.…
Recent studies have demonstrated that detailed monitoring of gravitational microlensing events can reveal the presence of planets orbiting the microlensed source stars. With the potential of probing planets in the Galactic Bulge and…
In this paper, we investigate the color changes of gravitational microlensing events caused by the two different mechanisms of differential amplification for a limb-darkened extended source and blending. From this investigation, we find…
The increasingly large numbers of multiple images in cluster-scale gravitational lenses have allowed for tighter constraints on the mass distributions of these systems. Most lens models have progressed alongside this increase in image…
Superfluid dark matter (SFDM) is a model that promises to reproduce the successes of both particle dark matter on cosmological scales and those of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) on galactic scales. SFDM reproduces MOND only up to a…
Observations of caustic-crossing galaxies at redshift $0.7<z<1$ show a wealth of transient events. Most of them are believed to be microlensing events of highly magnified stars. Earlier work predicted such events should be common near the…
When gravitational waves pass through the nuclear star clusters of galactic lenses, they may be microlensed by the stars. Such microlensing can cause potentially observable beating patterns on the waveform due to waveform superposition and…
Existence of new gauge U(1) symmetry possessed by dark matter (DM) particles implies the existence of a new Coulomb-like interaction, which leads to Sommerfeld-Gamow-Sakharov enhancement of dark matter annihilation at low relative…
We investigate the universality of the globular cluster luminosity function (GCLF) and the use of this function as an extragalactic distance indicator. Previous studies have found an offset between GCLF distances and those obtained with…