Related papers: Dimming Starlight with Dark Compact Objects
Astrophysical observations currently provide the only robust, empirical measurements of dark matter. In the coming decade, astrophysical observations will guide other experimental efforts, while simultaneously probing unique regions of dark…
Searching for compact objects (black holes, neutron stars, or white dwarfs) in the Milky Way is essential for understanding the stellar evolution history, the physics of compact objects, and the structure of our Galaxy. Compact objects in…
The phenomenon of microlensing has successfully been used to detect extrasolar planets. By observing characteristic, rare deviations in the gravitational microlensing light curve one can discover that a lens is a star--planet system. In…
Narrow stellar streams in the Milky Way halo are uniquely sensitive to dark-matter subhalos, but many of these subhalos may be tidally disrupted. I calculate the interaction between stellar and dark-matter streams using analytical and…
If the Dark Matter consists of primordial black holes (PBHs), we show that gravitational lensing of stars being monitored by NASA's Kepler search for extra-solar planets can cause significant numbers of detectable microlensing events. A…
We study the power of upcoming weak lensing surveys to probe dark energy. Dark energy modifies the distance-redshift relation as well as the matter power spectrum, both of which affect the weak lensing convergence power spectrum. Some…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
Experiments based on noble liquids and solid state cryogenic detectors have had a leading role in the direct detection of dark matter. But smaller scale projects can help to explore the new dark matter landscape with advanced,…
Merging galaxy clusters such as the Bullet Cluster provide a powerful testing ground for indirect detection of dark matter. The spatial distribution of the dark matter is both directly measurable through gravitational lensing and…
Dark matter direct (and indirect) detection experiments usually can only determine a specific combination of a power of the coupling and the dark matter density. This is also true for axion haloscopes which are sensitive to the product…
We use the distribution, and particularly the skewness, of high redshift type Ia supernovae brightnesses relative to the low redshift sample to constrain the density of macroscopic compact objects (MCOs) in the universe. The data favors…
Halometry---mapping out the spectrum, location, and kinematics of nonluminous structures inside the Galactic halo---can be realized via variable weak gravitational lensing of the apparent motions of stars and other luminous background…
We explore the stopping effect that results from interactions between dark matter and nuclei as the dark matter particles travel undergound towards the detector. Although this effect is negligible for heavy dark matter particles, there is…
A dark matter overdensity around a black hole may significantly alter the dynamics of the black hole's merger with another compact object. We consider here intermediate mass-ratio inspirals of stellar-mass compact objects with…
We investigate the possibility to determine the fraction of compact objects in the Universe by studying gravitational lensing effects on Type Ia supernova observations. Using simulated data sets from one year of operation of the proposed…
Observational evidence for dark matter can be explained by Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). These dark matter particle candidates could indirectly be detected through the observation of signals produced as part of WIMP…
The clustering of matter on cosmological scales is an essential probe for studying the physical origin and composition of our Universe. To date, most of the direct studies have focused on shear-shear weak lensing correlations, but it is…
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…
We argue that the lensing power spectrum of astrometric shift (lensing shift power spectrum) is a powerful tool of the clustering property of dark matter on subgalactic scales. First we give the formalism to probe the nature of dark matter…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…