Related papers: Microlensing by the Halo MACHOs with Spatially Var…
After a decade of gravitational microlensing experiments, a dozen of microlensing candidates in the direction of the stars of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) have been detected by the EROS and MACHO groups. Recently it was shown that the…
Having ruled out the possibility that stellar objects are the main contributor of the dark matter embedding galaxies, microlensing experiments cannot exclude the hypothesis that a significant fraction of the Milky Way dark halo might be…
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…
(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…
We study the use of parallax microlensing to separate the effects of the mass function of dark massive halo objects (MHOs or `machos') on the one hand and their spatial distribution and kinematics on the other. This disentanglement is…
All previous attempts to understand the microlensing results towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) have assumed homogeneous present day mass functions (PDMFs) for the lensing populations. Here, we present an investigation into the…
If the massive compact halo object (MACHO) fraction of the Galactic dark halo is f ~ 20% as suggested by some microlensing experiments, then about 1.2% of lensing events toward the Galactic bulge are due to MACHOs. For the 40% of these that…
Microlensing results towards the LMC strongly depend on the properties of both the luminous and the dark matter distribution in the Galaxy. The two main sources of uncertainty come from the poor knowledge of the rotation curve at large…
Current microlensing searches calibrate the mass fraction of the Milky Way halo which is in the form of Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). We show that surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) can probe the same quantity in…
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…
The expected microlensing events of the LMC by the MACHOs of the LMC itself are calculated and compared with analogue events by objects in the Galactic halo. The LMC matter distribution is modelled by a spherical halo and an exponential…
A substantial part of the dark matter of the Universe could be in the form of compact objects (MACHOs), detectable through gravitational microlensing effects as they pass through the line of sight to background light sources. So far, most…
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 present an update of results from the search for microlensing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) by EROS (Experience de Recherche d'Objets Sombres). We have now monitored 25 million stars over three years. Because of the small…
The nature of the several microlensing events observed by the MACHO team towards the LMC still remains controversial. Low-mass substellar objects and stars with masses larger than ~1 M_{sun} have been ruled out as major components of a…
The motivation for this paper is to review the limits set on the MACHO content of the Galactic halo by microlensing experiments in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This has been prompted by recent measurements of the Galactic…
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…
Microlensing events towards the Large Magellanic Cloud entail that a sizable fraction of dark matter is in the form of MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects), presumably located in the halo of the Galaxy. Within the present…
We investigate the dark halo lens mass function (MF) for a wide class of spheroidal non singular isothermal models comparing observed and observable microlensing quantities for MACHO observations towards LMC and taking into account the…
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…