Related papers: The Galactic Halo from Microlensing
Dark matter in galaxies, its abundance, and its distribution remain a subject of long-standing discussion, especially in view of the fact that neither dark matter particles nor dark matter bodies have yet been found. Experts' opinions range…
We demonstrate a new technique to search for dark compact objects. When dark matter comprising a dark compact object interacts with photons, the compact object can disperse light traveling though it. As these objects pass between Earth and…
We review some recent determinations of the amount of dark matter on galactic and larger scales, with special attention to the dark matter in the Milky Way. We then briefly review the motivation for and basic physics of several dark matter…
The detection of microlensing has opened the way for the development of new methods in galactic astronomy. This series of papers investigates what microlensing can teach us about the structure and shape of the dark halo. In this paper we…
In recent years various models for the Galactic distribution of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) have been proposed for the interpretation of microlensing toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). A direct way to fit the best model is…
Under the assumption that dark matter is made of new particles, annihilations of those are required to reproduce the correct dark matter abundance in the Universe. This process can occur in dense regions of our Galaxy such as the Galactic…
The long-standing issues of determination of the mass distribution and nature of the center of our Galaxy could be probed by a lensing experiment capable of testing the spatial and velocity distributions of stars nearby and beyond it. We…
Dark matter is among the most important open problems in both astrophysics and particle physics. We review the status of art of dark matter search at theoretical and experimental level discussing also alternative hypotheses.
We suggest a new component of the Milky Way that can account for both the optical depth and event durations implied by microlensing searches targeting the Large Magellanic Cloud. This component, which represents less than 4% of the total…
The recently reported microlensing events of the LMC have caused much excitement, and have been interpreted as due to `dark objects' (MACHOs) in the halo of our Galaxy. It is shown here that the stars within the LMC play a dominant role as…
We examine the most recent observational constraints arising from i) small-scale and large-scale Galactic dynamical properties, ii) star counts at faint magnitude and iii) microlensing experiments. From these constraints, we determine the…
Observations in the optical, in X-rays, and gravitational lensing of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and large-scale structure are beginning to provide clues to the dark matter problem. I review the impact of these observations on some of…
(Abridged version): The optical depth is widely used in Galactic microlensing studies as a means to determine the density of MACHOs, since in theory it depends only upon their spatial distribution and is therefore less model-dependent than…
The lens candidate CSL-1 has been interpreted as evidence for a cosmic string. Here we test the hypothesis that the lensing comes from a tidally disrupted dark matter halo. We calculate the mass-density relationship that one would expect…
Increasing evidences suggest that the Galactic halo is lumpy on kpc scales due to the accretion of at least a dozen small galaxies (LMC/SMC, Sgr, Fornax etc.). Faint stars in such lumpy structures can significant microlense a background…
Gravitational lensing of background compact objects like active galactic nuclei and quasars, by extended intermediate mass lenses such as globular clusters and and dark matter clumps with masses 10^5 - 10^8 M_sun, is considered. It is shown…
The simplest interpretation of the microlensing events towards the Large Magellanic Cloud detected by the MACHO and EROS collaborations is that about one third of the halo of our own Milky Way galaxy exists in the form of objects of around…
Recent interest in primordial black holes as a possible dark matter candidate has motivated the reanalysis of previous methods for constraining massive astrophysical compact objects in the Milky Way halo and beyond. In order to derive these…
Dark matter is the dominant form of matter in the universe, but its nature is unknown. It is plausibly an elementary particle, perhaps the lightest supersymmetric partner of known particle species. In this case, annihilation of dark matter…
We present a summary of the current status of searches for dark matter at the LHC from the ATLAS and CMS experiments. For various assumptions in the simplified parameter space, the LHC exclusions is complementary to direct detection…