Related papers: Gravitational Microlensing and Dark Matter Problem…
To reveal the galactic dark matter in the form of MACHOs ("Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects"), the POINT-AGAPE collaboration is carrying out a search for gravitational microlensing towards M31. A clear microlensing signal is…
Some previous studies have suggested that massive and intermediate-mass primordial black holes (PBHs) could comprise a substantial fraction of dark matter in the Universe. Such black holes, if they existed in the Milky Way halo, would give…
The density of stars and MACHOs in the universe could theoretically be determined or limited by simultaneous measurements of compact sources by well separated observers. A gravitational lens effect would be expected to create a slight…
Paczy\'nski (1986) suggested that ``dark" objects in the halo of our Galaxy could enhance the luminosity of foreground stars, acting as gravitational microlenses. Such events has been recently reported by different collaborations. We assume…
Studies of gravitational microlensing effects require the estimation of their detection efficiency as soon as one wants to quantify the massive compact objects along the line of sight of source targets. This is particularly important for…
We present calculations illustrating the potential of gravitational microlensing to discriminate between classical models of stellar surface brightness profiles and the recently computed ``Next Generation'' models of Hauschildt et al. These…
It is shown that a significant amount of detectable gravitational microlensing events that could potentially be found by MAssively Parallel Photometry (MAPP) projects (such as the MACHO, EROS and OGLE collaborations) will occur for stars…
The evolution of the observational results of microlensing towards the LMC and some of the suggested interpretations to account for them are discussed. It is emphasized that the results at present are indicative of a lensing population of…
We discuss the potential of the gravitational microlensing method as a unique tool to detect unambiguous signals caused by intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters. We select clusters near the line of sight to the Galactic Bulge…
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…
Experiments are looking for diffuse brown dwarfs in the dark galactic halo through the gravitational lens effect. If brown dwarfs are clumped in dark clusters, the event rate is not changed, but events are spatially clustered, and stars…
Recent determination of the outer rotation curve of the Galaxy suggests that the total Galactic mass is likely to concentrate into a region of radius $\sim2R_0$. If this finding is correct, the previously estimated optical depth of…
The discoveries of 17 microlensing event candidates have been reported over the last year by three teams conducting unprecedented mass photometric searches in the direction of the Galactic bulge and the Magellanic Clouds. These include 10…
The most accurate way to get information on the mass of the MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) is to use the method of mass moments. For the microlensing events detected so far by the EROS and the MACHO collaborations in…
Gravitational lensing has become one of the most interesting tools to study the mass distribution in the Universe. Since gravitational light deflection is independent of the nature and state of the matter, it is ideally suited to…
We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 photometry of 13 microlensed source stars from the 5.7 year Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) survey conducted by the MACHO Project. The microlensing source stars are identified by deriving accurate…
We present a catalog of 450 high signal-to-noise microlensing events observed by the MACHO collaboration between 1993 and 1999. The events are distributed throughout our fields and, as expected, they show clear concentration toward the…
Gravitational microlensing of planetary-mass objects (or "nanolensing", as it has been termed) can be used to probe the distribution of mass in a galaxy that is acting as a gravitational lens. Microlensing and nanolensing light curve…
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 the microlensing events now being detected toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are due to lenses in the Milky Way halo, then the events should typically have asymmetries of order 1% due to parallax from the reflex motion of the…