Related papers: Statistical Interpretation of LMC Microlensing Can…
The simplest interpretation of the microlensing events observed towards the Large Magellanic Cloud is that approximately half of the mass of the Milky Way halo is in the form of MAssive Compact Halo Objects with $M \sim 0.5 M_{\odot}$. This…
The recent binary microlensing event toward the Small Magellanic Cloud MACHO-98-SMC-1 was alerted by the MACHO collaboration and monitored by many microlensing experiments for its complete coverage of the second caustic crossing. The…
We propose to search for MACHOs by observing EAGLE (Extremely Amplified Gravitational LEnsing) events of a majority of dim stars. This search is independent of the usual one. For the detection limit of EAGLE (about 20 mag), about 100 f…
In the framework of the search of dark matter in galactic halos in form of massive compact halo object (MACHOs), we discuss the status of microlensing observations towards the Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda galaxy, M31. The detection…
We study the accuracy of inference of the massive halo objects' (MHO or `Macho') mass function from microlensing events observed toward LMC. Assuming the spatial distribution and kinematics of the objects are known, the slope and the range…
The EROS microlensing survey has monitored nearly 100 million stars for seven years, to search for halo brown dwarfs and compact objects in the Galactic disk. In this paper, we review the various EROS observation programs and the…
There are lines of evidence suggesting that some of the observed microlensing events in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are caused by ordinary star lenses as opposed to dark Machos in the Galactic halo. Efficient lensing…
All of the proposed explanations for the microlensing events observed towards the LMC have difficulties. One of these proposed explanations, LMC self-lensing, which invokes ordinary LMC stars as the long sought-after lenses, has recently…
I review proposals for explaining the current gravitational microlensing results from the EROS and MACHO surveys towards the Magellanic Clouds. Solutions involving massive compact halo objects (MACHOs), both baryonic and non-baryonic, as…
We study the prospects for the current microlensing searches, which have recently discovered several candidates, to yield useful information about the flattening of the Galaxy dark matter halo. Models of HI warps and N-body simulations of…
The primary goal of this paper is to provide the evidence that can either prove or falsify the hypothesis that dark matter in the Galactic halo can clump into stellar-mass compact objects. If such objects existed, they would act as lenses…
The dependence of microlensing time scale frequency distributions and optical depth toward the galactic center on galactic model parameters is explored in detail for a distribution of stars consisting of the Zhao (1996) bar and nucleus and…
The measurements of the possible gravitational microlensing events are analysed with a simple yet accurate disc--halo model of the Milky Way Galaxy. This comprises a luminous exponential disc embedded in a flattened dark matter halo with…
Using eight dark matter haloes extracted from fully-self consistent cosmological N-body simulations, we perform microlensing experiments. A hypothetical observer is placed at a distance of 8.5 kpc from the centre of the halo measuring…
I discuss two hypotheses that might explain LMC microlensing: the Halo stellar remnant lensing hypothesis and the unvirialized LMC lensing hypothesis. I show that white dwarfs cannot contribute substantially to the cosmic baryon budget;…
The recent observations of microlensing events in the LMC by the MACHO and EROS collaborations suggest that an important fraction of the galactic halo is in the form of Massive Halo Objects (MHO) of about 0.1 M_{\odot}. Here, we argue that…
The recent suggestion that the microlensing events observed towards the Large Magellanic Cloud are due to an intervening Sgr-like dwarf galaxy is examined. A search for foreground RR Lyrae in the MACHO photometry database yields 20 stars…
Recent observations of microlensing events in the Large Magellanic Cloud by the MACHO and EROS collaborations suggest that an important fraction of the galactic halo is in form of Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) with…
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…
The interpretation of microlensing results towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) still remains controversial. Whereas white dwarfs have been proposed to explain these results and, hence, to contribute significantly to the mass budget of…