Related papers: Microlensing signatures of extended dark objects u…
The scientific study of the Solar System's minor bodies ultimately starts with a search for those bodies. This chapter presents a review of the use of machine learning techniques to find moving objects, both natural and artificial, in…
We demonstrate the possibility of detecting tidal stripping of dark matter subhalos within galaxy groups using weak gravitational lensing. We have run ray-tracing simulations on galaxy catalogues from the Millennium Simulation to generate…
Gravitational microlensing finds planets through their gravitational influence on the light coming from a more distant background star. The presence of the planet is then inferred from the tell-tale brightness variations of the background…
Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are some of the best-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates. Under certain circumstances, large axion fluctuations in the early universe can collapse to form dense configurations called axion clumps.…
Asteroids are an indelible part of most astronomical surveys though only a few surveys are dedicated to their detection. Over the years, high cadence microlensing surveys have amassed several terabytes of data while scanning primarily the…
Current theories of structure formation predict specific density profiles of galaxy dark matter haloes, and with weak gravitational lensing we can probe these profiles on several scales. On small scales, higher-order shape distortions known…
During microlensing events with a small impact parameter, the amplification of the source flux is sensitive to the surface brightness distribution of the source star. Such events provide a means for studying the surface structure of target…
Observations of the Sgr A* region in the galactic center confirm the presence of a large amount of matter in a small volume, leading to the consensus that a black hole exists there. However, dynamical observations cannot rule out the…
Gravitational microlensing may detect dark stellar remnants - black holes or neutron stars - even if they are isolated. However, it is challenging to estimate masses of isolated dark stellar remnants using solely photometric data for…
Detecting compact objects by means of their gravitational lensing effect on an observed companion in a binary system has already been suggested almost four decades ago. However, these predictions were made even before the first observations…
We consider a contribution of microlensing in X-ray variability of high-redshifted QSOs. Such an effect could be caused by stellar mass objects (SMO) located in a bulge or/and in a halo of this quasar as well as at cosmological distances…
A small fraction of the gravitational-wave (GW) signals that will be detected by second and third generation detectors are expected to be strongly lensed by galaxies and clusters, producing multiple observable copies. While optimal Bayesian…
Nearby masses can have a high probability of lensing stars in a distant background field. High-probability lensing, or mesolensing, can therefore be used to dramatically increase our knowledge of dark and dim objects in the solar…
We investigate the chance of detecting proto-planetary or debris disks in stars that induce microlensing events (lenses). The modification of the light curves shapes due to occultation and extinction by the disks as well as the additional…
The MACHO project is a search for dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs). The project has photometrically monitored tens of millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and…
In the CDM scenario, dark matter halos are assembled hierarchically from smaller subunits. A long-standing problem with this picture is that the number of sub-halos predicted by CDM simulations is orders of magnitudes higher than the known…
Dark matter cannot be observed directly, but its weak gravitational lensing slightly distorts the apparent shapes of background galaxies, making weak lensing one of the most promising probes of cosmology. Several observational studies have…
Accelerating supermassive black holes, connected to cosmic strings, could contribute to structure formation and get captured by galaxies if their velocities are small. This would mean that the acceleration of these black holes is small too.…
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 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…