Related papers: Confirmation of Planet-Mass Objects in Extragalact…
Microlensing by stars in the lens galaxy of a gravitationally lensed quasar is a phenomenon that can selectively magnify quasar subregions, producing observable changes in the continuum brightness or distortions in the emission line…
We study the time variation of the apparent flux of cosmological point sources due to the transient weak lensing by dark matter microhaloes. Assuming a transverse motion of microhaloes with respect to our line of sight, we derive the…
If compact baryonic objects contribute significantly to the dark matter in our Galaxy, their mass function will present vital clues for galaxy formation theories and star formation processes in the early Universe. Here we discuss what one…
CONTEXT: Gravitationally lensed quasars constitute an independent tool to derive H0 through time-delays; they offer as well the opportunity to study the mass distribution and interstellar medium of their lensing galaxies and, through…
Cosmological observations precisely measure primordial variations in the density of the Universe at megaparsec and larger scales, but much smaller scales remain poorly constrained. However, sufficiently large initial perturbations at small…
We present the first comprehensive study of astrometric microlensing by exotic astrophysical dark objects, focusing on two theoretically motivated models -- Q-ball and boson star. We demonstrate that these extended objects generate…
While dozens of stellar mass black holes have been discovered in binary systems, isolated black holes have eluded detection. Their presence can be inferred when they lens light from a background star. We attempt to detect the astrometric…
We compare X-ray and weak-lensing masses for four galaxy clusters that comprise the top-ranked shear-selected cluster system in the Deep Lens Survey. The weak-lensing observations of this system, which is associated with A781, are from the…
Massive structures, such as galaxies, act as strong gravitational lenses on background sources. When the background source is a quasar, several lensed images are seen, as magnified or de-magnified versions of the same object. The detailed…
We analyze three years (1998-2000) of OGLE observations of microlensing events to place limits on the abundance of planets with a planet-to-star mass ratio $q=10^{-3}$ at distances $\sim 1-4$AU from their host stars, i.e. `cool Jupiters'.…
The recent discovery of thousands of ultra diffuse galaxies (UDGs) in nearby galaxy clusters has opened a new window into the process of galaxy formation and evolution. Several scenarios have been proposed to explain the formation history…
Microlensing detections of cool planets are important for the construction of an unbiased sample to estimate the frequency of planets beyond the snow line, which is where giant planets are thought to form according to the core accretion…
Microlensing observations have now become a useful tool in searching for non--luminous astrophysical compact objects (brown dwarfs, faint stars, neutron stars, black holes and even planets). Originally conceived for establishing whether the…
We present four new seasons of optical monitoring data and six epochs of X-ray photometry for the doubly-imaged lensed quasar Q J0158-4325. The high-amplitude, short-period microlensing variability for which this system is known has…
The population of strong lensing galaxies is a sub-set of intermediate-redshift massive galaxies, whose population-level properties are not yet well understood. In the near future, thousands of multiply imaged systems are expected to be…
Dark matter may be in the form of non-baryonic structures such as compact subhalos and boson stars. Structures weighing between asteroid and solar masses may be discovered via gravitational microlensing, an astronomical probe that has in…
Observations of the Galactic bulge revealed an excess of short-timescale gravitational microlensing events that are generally attributed to a large population of free-floating or wide-orbit exoplanets. However, in recent years, some authors…
We present the analysis of microlensing event MOA-2010-BLG-117, and show that the light curve can only be explained by the gravitational lensing of a binary source star system by a star with a Jupiter mass ratio planet. It was necessary to…
Context: Gravitational microlensing is sensitive to compact-object lenses in the Milky Way, including white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes, and could potentially probe a wide range of stellar remnant masses. However, the mass of the…
We aim to find missing microlensing planets hidden in the unanalyzed lensing events of previous survey data. For this purpose, we conduct a systematic inspection of high-magnification microlensing events, with peak magnifications $A_{\rm…