Related papers: Observable consequences of cold clouds as dark mat…
The failure to find evidence for elementary particles that could serve as the constituents of dark matter brings to mind suggestions that dark matter might consist of massive compact objects (MACHOs). In particular, it has recently been…
The paper "Calorimetric Dark Matter Detection with Galactic Center Gas Clouds" (Bhoonah et al. 2018) aims to derive limits on dark matter interactions by demanding that heat transfer due to DM interactions is less than that by astrophysical…
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…
The nature of the dark matter in the haloes of galaxies is one of the outstanding questions in astrophysics. All stellar candidates, until recently thought to be likely baryonic contributions to the Halo of our Galaxy, are shown to be ruled…
Clumping of elementary dark matter in the Galaxy halo may be inevitable. If so, the nondetection of certain dark matter candidates could simply mean that the local halo density is low. Conversely, indirect detection of annihilation products…
Observations of density profiles of galaxies and clusters constrain the properties of dark matter. Formation of stable halos by collisional fluids with very low mass particles appears as the most probable interpretation, while halos formed…
The recent detection of microlensing of stars of LMC by compact objects in the halo of our galaxy suggests that our galaxy is surrounded by a non-luminous halo made of compact objects with mass of about $(0.03-0.5) \msun$. The rate of…
There are a number of theoretical and observational hints that large numbers of low-mass galaxies composed entirely of dark matter exist in the field. The theoretical considerations follow from the prediction of cold dark matter theory that…
The MACHO project has been monitoring about ten million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud in the search for gravitational microlensing events caused by massive compact halo objects (Machos) in the halo of the Milky Way. In our standard…
Microlensing surveys search for the transient brightening of a background star that is the signature of gravitational lensing by a foreground compact object. This technique is an elegant way to search for astrophysical candidates that might…
The observation of flat rotation curves in asymptotic region of galaxies implies that the dark matter density profile decreases exponentially with the gravitational potential in this region. It is curious that this behavior is identical to…
If the Universe has a significant baryonic dark component in the form of compact objects in galaxy halos (machos), then there is a minute chance (about $10^{-7}$) that one of the Galactic machos passes sufficiently close to our line of…
If dark halos are composed of dense gas clouds, as has recently been inferred, then collisions between clouds lead to galaxy evolution. Collisions introduce a core in an initially singular dark matter distribution, and can thus help to…
Celestial capture of dark matter provides a useful handle for constraining its particulate properties. The capture formalism is sensitive to the phase space distribution of dark matter in the vicinity of the celestial object. This article…
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…
Detecting dark matter as it streams through detectors on Earth relies on knowledge of its phase space density on a scale comparable to the size of our solar system. Numerical simulations predict that our Galactic halo contains an enormous…
A particular open problem in cosmology is whether dark matter on small scales is clumpy, forming gravitationally-bound halos distributed within the Galaxy. The practical difficulties inherent in testing this hypothesis stem from the fact…
Fifteen years or so ago, it was commonly argued; ``If we want to believe the observations rather than our prejudice, we should take as our best bet that dark haloes are baryonic.'' Such a viewpoint is not often heard today. This…
By means of extensive galactic modeling we study the implications of the more than 100 microlensing events that have now been observed for the composition of the dark halo of the Galaxy. Based on the currently published data, including the…
A small admixture of dark matter gravitationally bound to the proto-Solar gas cloud could be adiabatically contracted into Earth-crossing orbits with a local density comparable to (or even exceeding) the Galactic halo density. We show that…