Related papers: Constraining compact dark matter with time-varying…
A substantial part of the dark matter of the Universe could be in the form of compact objects (MACHOs), detectable through gravitational microlensing effects as they pass through the line of sight to background light sources. So far, most…
In X-ray binaries, several percent of the compact object luminosity is intercepted by the surface of the normal companion and re-radiated through Compton reflection and the K-fluorescence. This reflected emission follows the variability of…
Microlensing of gravitationally lensed quasars by the stars in the foreground lens galaxy can be used to probe the nature of dark matter, to determine the mean stellar mass in the lens galaxy, and to measure the internal structure of quasar…
We present a simple but general argument that strongly limits the abundance of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) (or other unknown population of compact objects) with masses similar to those determined by LIGO/Virgo from BH binary mergers. We…
We estimate the fraction of mass that is composed of compact objects in gravitational lens galaxies. This study is based on microlensing measurements (obtained from the literature) of a sample of 29 quasar image pairs seen through 20 lens…
Recently the French EROS collaboration and the American-Australian MACHO collaboration have reported the observation of altogether three possible microlensing events by monitoring over several years the brightness of millions of stars in…
Studies of the lensed quasar ${\rm Q}0957+561 {\rm A,B}$ have shown evidence for microlensing in the brightness history of the quasar images. It had been suggested that a frequency offset between the brightness fluctuations in each of the…
There is abundant evidence that the mass of the Universe is dominated by dark matter of unknown form. The MACHO project is one of several teams searching for the dark matter around our Galaxy in the form of Massive Compact Halo Objects…
Intrinsically cold particle dark matter inevitably creates halos with sharp discontinuities in projected surface density caused by the projection of fold catastrophes onto the sky. In principle, these imperfections can be detected and…
Astronomical and cosmological observations of the past 80 years build solid evidence that atomic matter makes up only a small fraction of the matter in the universe. The dominant fraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation,…
Measuring the density profile and mass concentration of dark-matter haloes is a key test of the standard cold dark matter paradigm. Such objects are dark and thus challenging to characterise, but they can be studied via gravitational…
We present a joint estimate of the stellar/dark matter mass fraction in lens galaxies and the average size of the accretion disk of lensed quasars from microlensing measurements of 27 quasar image pairs seen through 19 lens galaxies. The…
Current X-ray observations and simulations show that gravitational lensing can be used to infer the structure near the event horizons of black holes, constrain the dynamics and evolution of black-hole accretion and outflows, test general…
Several dark matter models allow for the intriguing possibility of exotic compact object formation. These objects might have unique characteristics that set them apart from their baryonic counterparts. Furthermore, gravitational wave…
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…
The nature of dark matter remains one of the biggest open questions in physics. Intriguingly, it has been suggested that dark matter may be explained by another recently observed phenomenon: the detection of gravitational waves by LIGO.…
We discuss a possible method for detection of dark companions of galactic objects of stellar mass. Such binary systems are likely to occur in the galactic disk and possibly also in the halo. The high incidence of binary and…
We explore a unique electromagnetic signature of stellar-mass compact-object binaries long before they are detectable in gravitational waves. We show that gravitational lensing of light emitting components of a compact-object binary, by the…
Black holes are the most compact objects in the Universe. According to general relativity, black holes have a horizon that hides a singularity where Einstein's theory breaks down. Recently, gravitational waves opened the possibility to…
The detection of a sub-solar mass black hole could yield dramatic new insights into the nature of dark matter and early-Universe physics, as such objects lack a traditional astrophysical formation mechanism. Gravitational waves allow for…