Related papers: Microlensing and Galactic Structure
Aims. We seek to probe the Galactic bulge IMF starting from microlensing observations. Methods. We analyse the recent results of the microlensing campaigns carried out towards the Galactic bulge presented by the EROS, MACHO and OGLE…
Measurements of the microlensing optical depth, tau, towards the Galactic bulge appear to depend on the method used to obtain them. Those values based on the lensing of red clump giants (RCGs) appear to be significantly lower than those…
The inner Milky Way is dominated by a boxy, triaxial bulge which is believed to have formed through disk instability processes. Despite its proximity, its large-scale properties are still not very well known, due to our position in the…
We present a measurement of the microlensing optical depth toward the Galactic bulge based on the analysis of 15 contiguous1 square degrees fields centered on (l=2.5 deg, b=-4.0 deg) and containing 1.42 million clump-giant stars (belonging…
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…
We analyse the effects on the predictions for the microlensing searches toward the Galactic bulge coming from the fact that not all the stars monitored belong to the bulge itself, but that a non--negligible fraction of them actually are in…
The MACHO project carries out regular photometric monitoring of millions of stars in the Magellanic Clouds and Galactic Bulge, to search for very rare gravitational microlensing events due to compact objects in the galactic halo and disk. A…
If dark matter in the form of compact objects comprises a large fraction of the mass of the universe, then gravitational lensing effects on gamma-ray bursts are expected. We utilize BATSE and Ulysses data to search for lenses of different…
We use the statistics of strong gravitational lensing from the CLASS survey to impose constraints on the velocity dispersion and density profile of elliptical galaxies. This approach differs from much recent work, where the luminosity…
We study microlensing of the faint images that form close to the centers of strong gravitational lens galaxies. These central images, which have finally begun to yield to observations, naturally appear in dense stellar fields and may be…
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…
We have monitored 8.6 million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud for 1.1 years and have found 3 events consistent with gravitational microlensing. We place strong constraints on the Galactic halo content in the form of compact lensing…
We present a study of the environment of barred galaxies using a volume-limited sample of over 30,000 galaxies drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We use four different statistics to quantify the environment: the projected two-point…
We analyse stellar masses of clumps drawn from a compilation of star-forming galaxies at 1.1<z<3.6. Comparing clumps selected in different ways, and in lensed or blank field galaxies, we examine the effects of spatial resolution and…
Microlensing is now a very popular observational astronomical technique. The investigations accessible through this effect range from the dark matter problem to the search for extra-solar planets. In this review, the techniques to search…
Microlensing promises to be a powerful tool for studying distant galaxies and quasars. As the data and models improve, there are systematic effects that need to be explored. Quasar continuum and broad-line regions may respond differently to…
In microlensing of a Galactic star by a brown dwarf or other compact object, the amplified image really consists of two unresolved images with slightly different light-travel times. The difference (of order a microsecond) is GM/c^3 times a…
Strong gravitational lensing at the galaxy scale is a valuable tool for various applications in astrophysics and cosmology. The primary uses of galaxy-scale lensing are to study elliptical galaxies' mass structure and evolution, constrain…
The scatter in the galaxy size versus stellar mass (Mstar) relation gets largely reduced when, rather than the half-mass radius Re, the size at a fixed surface density is used. Here we address why this happens. We show how a reduction is to…
We derive the number density evolution of massive field galaxies in the redshift range 0.4 < z < 1.2 using the K-band selected field galaxy sample from the Munich Near-IR Cluster Survey (MUNICS). We rely on spectroscopically calibrated…