Related papers: Gravitational microlensing: a method for detecting…
We analyze the first-year MACHO collaboration observations of microlensing towards the Galactic center using a new direct likelihood technique that is sensitive to the distribution of the events on the sky. We consider the full set of 41…
The discovery of the Sgr dwarf galaxy (Ibata, Gilmore, Irwin 1994) shows that the Galactic halo contains large clumps which are not full viralized. Stars in such a clump can lense a background extragalactic source. I use parameters of Sgr…
We propose a new approach for measuring the mass profile and shape of groups and clusters of galaxies, which uses lensing magnification of distant background galaxies. The main advantage of lensing magnification is that, unlike lensing…
With the increase in the number of observed gravitational wave (GW) signals, detecting strongly lensed GWs by galaxies has become a real possibility. Lens galaxies also contain microlenses (e.g., stars and black holes), introducing further…
We propose a new technique to directly measure the shapes of dark matter halos of galaxies using weak gravitational lensing. Extending the standard galaxy-galaxy lensing method, we show that the shape parameters of the mass distribution of…
In the standard structure formation scenario based on the cold dark matter paradigm, galactic halos are predicted to contain a large population of dark matter subhalos. While the most massive members of the subhalo population can appear as…
The Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model for galaxy formation predicts that a significant fraction of mass in the dark matter haloes that surround L L* galaxies is bound in substructures of mass 1E4-1E7Msun. The number of observable baryonic…
Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for quantifying the mass content and distribution in distant galaxies. By using milliarcsecond angular resolution observations of radio-loud gravitationally lensed sources it is also possible to…
We discuss the implications of the more than 50 microlensing events seen by the EROS, MACHO, and OGLE collaborations for the composition of the halo of our galaxy. The event rates indicate that the halo mass fraction in MACHO's is less than…
Gravitational Lensing is an efficient tool to probe: the mass distribution of collapsed systems: galaxies and clusters; high redshift objects thanks to the gravitational amplification; and the geometry of the Universe. I will review here…
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…
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…
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…
We report a significant detection of weak, tangential distortion of the images of cosmologically distant, faint galaxies due to gravitational lensing by foreground galaxies. A mean image polarisation of $<p>=0.011\pm 0.006$ is measured for…
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…
The nature of the dark matter in the halo of our Galaxy is still largely unknown. The microlensing events found so far towards the Large Magellanic Cloud suggest that at most about 20% of the halo dark matter is in the form of MACHOs…
Increasing evidences suggest that the Galactic halo is lumpy on kpc scales due to the accretion of at least a dozen small galaxies (LMC/SMC, Sgr, Fornax etc.). Faint stars in such lumpy structures can significant microlense a background…
Ongoing microlensing surveys have already yielded more than five hundred microlensing events, most of which have been identified in real-time. In this review I present the basic theory and observational status of these surveys. I highlight…
We propose a novel method to select satellite galaxies in outer regions of galaxy groups or clusters using weak gravitational lensing. The method is based on the theoretical expectation that the tangential shear pattern around satellite…
Cold, dense clouds of gas have been proposed as baryonic candidates for the dark matter in Galactic haloes, and have also been invoked in the Galactic disc as an explanation for the excess faint sub-mm sources detected by SCUBA. Even if…