Related papers: On the Detectability of Very Massive Compact Objec…

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…

By means of extensive galactic modeling we study the implications of the more than 100 microlensing events that have now been observed for the composition of the dark halo of the Galaxy. Based on the currently published data, including the…

If compact baryonic objects contribute significantly to the dark matter in our Galaxy, their mass function will present vital clues for galaxy formation theories and star formation processes in the early Universe. Here we discuss what one…

EROS (Exp\'erience de Recherche d'Objets Sombres) has been monitoring the luminosity of 4 million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud in order to search for gravitational microlensing by unseen objects in the galactic halo. We present here…

The existence of strong lensing systems with Einstein radii (Re) covering the full mass spectrum, from ~1-2" (produced by galaxy scale dark matter haloes) to >10" (produced by galaxy cluster scale haloes) have long been predicted. Many…

The POINT-AGAPE collaboration is carrying out a search for gravitational microlensing toward M31 to reveal galactic dark matter in the form of MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) in the halos of the Milky Way and M31. A…

Massive stars at cosmological distances can be individually detected during transient microlensing events, when gravitational lensing magnifications may exceed ~1000. Nine such sources were identified in JWST NIRCam imaging of a single…

Measuring the density profile and mass concentration of dark-matter haloes is a key test of the standard cold dark matter paradigm. Such objects are dark and thus challenging to characterise, but they can be studied via gravitational…

We detect the weak gravitational lensing distortion of 450,000 background galaxies (20<R<23) by 790 foreground galaxies (R<18) selected from the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (LCRS). This is the first detection of weak lensing by field…

We describe observations carried out by the MOA group of the Galactic Bulge during 2000 that were designed to detect efficiently gravitational microlensing of faint stars in which the magnification is high and/or of short duration. These…

If the halo of the lensing galaxy 0957+561 is made of massive compact objects (MACHOs), they must affect the lightcurves of the quasar images Q0957+561 A and B differently. We search for this microlensing effect in the double quasar by…

Gravitational lensing can amplify the apparent brightness of distant sources. Images that are highly magnified are often part of multiply-imaged systems, but we consider the possibility of having large magnifications without additional…

The amount of dark matter in the solar neighbourhood is a poorly constrained quantity which is nevertheless used to normalise the properties of the dark halo. While the current surveys towards the LMC, SMC and the Galactic bulge probe the…

Massive gravitational microlensing programs were begun about a decade ago as a means to search for compact baryonic dark matter in the Galaxy, but before the first events were detected the technique was also proposed as a means of detecting…

Astronomical objects in our universe that are too faint to be directly detectable exist and are important - an obvious example being dark matter. The same can also apply to very faint baryonic objects, such as low luminosity dwarf galaxies…

Gravitational lensing of background compact objects like active galactic nuclei and quasars, by extended intermediate mass lenses such as globular clusters and and dark matter clumps with masses 10^5 - 10^8 M_sun, is considered. It is shown…

Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves provides a potential new probe of dark matter structures. In this work, we consider the microlensing effect on gravitational wave signals from black hole binaries induced by low-mass dark matter…

Gravitational waves can be focussed by the gravity of an intervening galaxy, just like light, thereby magnifying binary merging events in the far Universe. High magnification by galaxies is found to be responsible for the brightest sources…

We present the results from recent VLA 8.5-GHz and WSRT 1.4 and 4.9-GHz monitoring campaigns of the CLASS gravitational lens B1600+434 and show how the observed variations argue strongly in favor of microlensing by MACHOs in the halo of a…

Galaxy-cluster gravitational lenses can magnify background galaxies by a total factor of up to ~50. Here we report an image of an individual star at redshift z=1.49 (dubbed "MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1 (LS1)") magnified by >2000. A separate…