Related papers: Gravitational microlensing by dark matter in exten…
A moving mass makes a gravitational wake in the partially ionized interstellar medium, which acts as a lens for radio-frequency light. Consequently, plasma microlensing could complement gravitational microlensing in the search for invisible…
Weak gravitational lensing observations probe the spectrum and evolution of density fluctuations and the cosmological parameters which govern them. The non-linear evolution of large scale structure produces a non-Gaussian signal which is…
Microlensing surveys search for the transient brightening of a background star that is the signature of gravitational lensing by a foreground compact object. This technique is an elegant way to search for astrophysical candidates that might…
Microlensing studies of quasars can reveal dark matter lumps over a broad mass spectrum; we highlight the importance of monitoring quasars which are seen through the halos of low-redshift galaxies. For these configurations microlensing by…
The developments summarized with the name ``weak gravitational lensing'' have led to exciting possibilities to study the (statistical properties of the) dark matter distribution in the Universe. Concentrating on those aspects which require…
Gas in the interstellar matter is generally organized in filamentary structures, which may be also relevant for a complementary explanation of the dark matter in the Galactic halo. We examine the possibility that such structures may act as…
One of the possible explanations for dark matter is that of compact dark objects of baryonic origin, such as black holes or even planets. Accumulating evidence, including the discovery of merging stellar mass black holes through…
Dark matter halos represent the highest density peaks in the matter distribution. Conversely, cosmic voids are under-dense patches of the universe. Probing the mass distribution of the universe requires various approaches, including weak…
Utilizing gravitational-wave (GW) lensing opens a new way to understand the small-scale structure of the universe. We show that, in spite of its coarse angular resolution and short duration of observation, LIGO can detect the GW lensing…
We investigate gravitational microlensing of point-like lenses surrounded by diffuse gas clouds. Besides gravitational bending, one must also consider refraction and absorption phenomena. According to the cloud density, the light curves may…
Five years of EROS data towards the Small Magellanic Cloud have been searched for gravitational microlensing events, using a new, more accurate method to assess the impact of stellar blending on the efficiency. Four long-duration candidates…
The gravity due to a multiple-mass system has a remarkable gravitational effect: the extreme magnification of background light sources along extended so-called caustic lines. This property has been the channel for some remarkable…
While the direct detection of the dark-matter particle remains very challenging, the nature of dark matter could be possibly constrained by comparing the observed abundance and properties of small-scale sub-galactic mass structures with…
The measurements of the possible gravitational microlensing events are analysed with a simple yet accurate disc--halo model of the Milky Way Galaxy. This comprises a luminous exponential disc embedded in a flattened dark matter halo with…
In recent years, it has become possible to detect individual dark matter subhalos near images of strongly lensed extended background galaxies. Typically, only the most massive subhalos in the strong lensing region may be detected this way.…
High-resolution N-body simulations of dark matter halos indicate that the Milky Way contains numerous subhalos. When a dark matter subhalo passes in front of a star, the light from that star will be deflected by gravitational lensing,…
Numerous microlensing survey programs have constrained the possibility of dark matter existing in the form of compact objects within the Galactic halo. These constraints on the dark matter fraction were derived under the assumption of…
Strong gravitational lensing is a promising way of uncovering the nature of dark matter, by finding perturbations to images that cannot be well accounted for by modeling the lens galaxy without additional structure, be it subhalos (smaller…
The LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave (GW) observation unveiled the new population of black holes (BHs) that appears to have an extended mass spectrum up to around $70M_\odot$, much heavier than the previously-believed mass range ($\sim…
The initial results of microlensing surveys toward the Galactic bulge and the LMC are puzzling. Toward the LMC, the total mass in MACHOs is of order half that required to explain the dark matter, but the estimated MACHO mass (~0.4 Msun) is…