Related papers: Direct Mapping of Massive Compact Objects in Extra…
The idea that dark matter can be made of intermediate-mass primordial black holes in the $10M_\odot \lesssim M \lesssim 200M_\odot$ range has recently been reconsidered, particularly in the light of the detection of gravitational waves by…
It has been argued in a number of recent papers that dark matter is in the form of Jupiter mass primordial black holes which betray their presence by microlensing quasars. This lensing accounts for a number of characteristic properties of…
Massive Compact objects in the halo, known as MACHOs, have been postulated as the origin of a substantial fraction of `dark matter' known to exist in the haloes of galaxies$^{1,2}$. Paczy\'nski$^3$ has suggested that it might possible to…
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…
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…
If the dark halo of our galaxy is made of compact objects as massive as M = 10^6 solar masses, their detection by means of ordinary microlensing searches would take a very long time as the characteristic time scale of such a lensing event,…
Strong gravitational lensing offers a compelling test of the cold dark matter paradigm, as it allows for subhaloes with masses of $\sim10^{9}$ M$_\odot$ and below to be detected. We test commonly-used techniques for detecting subhaloes…
In the CDM scenario, dark matter halos are assembled hierarchically from smaller subunits. A long-standing problem with this picture is that the number of sub-halos predicted by CDM simulations is orders of magnitudes higher than the known…
The MACHO Project is searching for galactic dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (Machos). Millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and Galactic bulge are photometrically…
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…
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…
Recent HST and ISO observations provide very severe limits on any compact baryonic contributions to galactic (dark) halos. When combined with Milky Way Galaxy microlensing results, almost the entire plausible range of massive compact…
We investigate the effects of numerous dark matter subhalos in a galaxy-sized halo on the events of strong lensing, to assess their presence as expected from the cold dark matter scenario. Lens galaxies are represented by a smooth ellipsoid…
Hierarchical clustering models of cold dark matter (CDM) predict that about 5% - 10% of a galaxy-sized halo with mass ~ 10^12 solar masses (M_sun) resides in substructures (CDM subhalos) with masses <= 10^8 M_sun. To directly identify such…
Disk-halo models of the Galaxy and LMC are constructed and used to analyse the microlensing data-set. Deflectors in the LMC bar, disk and halo provide an optical depth to microlensing of $\sim 2 \times 10^{-7}$. Deflectors in the Galactic…
High-resolution N-body simulations of dark matter halos indicate that the Milky Way contains numerous subhalos. When a dark matter subhalo passes in front of a star, the light from that star will be deflected by gravitational lensing,…
Many high velocity HI clouds (HVCs) are now believed to be scattered throughout the Galactic halo on scales of tens of kiloparsecs. Some of these clouds appear to contain substantial HI masses (>10^6 Msun). It has been suggested that these…
The MACHO collaboration reports on the analysis of our first year LMC data, 9.5 million light curves with an average of 235 observations each. Automated selection procedures give 3 events consistent with microlensing. We evaluate our…
Microlensing is the tool of choice for the search and the analysis of compact halo objects ("MACHOs"), a still viable class of dark matter candidates at the galactic scale. Different analyses point towards an agreement in excluding dark…
One of the most important problems in astrophysics concerns the nature of the dark matter in galactic halos, whose presence is implied mainly by the observed flat rotation curves in spiral galaxies. Due to the Pauli exclusion principle it…