Related papers: On the Detectability of Very Massive Compact Objec…
If massive compact halo objects (\ms) are detected in ongoing searches, then \tsmctlmc, the ratio of the optical depth toward the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, will be a robust indicator of the flattening of the Galactic dark matter…
We investigate the possibility of identifying massive objects (lenses) in the Galactic Center region (GC) by means of pulsar timing. The well known intensity change due to microlensing is found to be less important. For typical stellar…
Recent observations of lensed galaxies at cosmological distances have detected individual stars that are extremely magnified when crossing the caustics of lensing clusters. In idealized cluster lenses with smooth mass distributions, two…
Dark matter could take the form of dark massive compact halo objects (dMACHOs); i.e., composite objects that are made up of dark-sector elementary particles, that could have a macroscopic mass from the Planck scale to above the solar mass…
It has been revealed using microlensing that a considerable part, possibly more than half, of the dark matter in the halo of our Galaxy consists of objects with a mass spectrum ranging from 0.05 to 0.8 of the solar mass. What is the nature…
A new type of gravitational microlensing experiment toward a field where stars are not resolved is being developed observationally and theoretically: pixel lensing. When the experiment is carried out toward the M31 bulge area, events may be…
We detail how microlensing internal to M31 could be used to test whether a large fraction of the matter in spiral galaxy haloes is composed of dark objects with masses comparable to those of stars, and in the process show how the…
Galaxy clusters form at the highest density nodes of the cosmic web. The clustering of massive halos is enhanced relative to the general mass distribution and matter beyond the virial region is strongly correlated to the halo mass (halo…
Gravitational waves from binary black holes that are gravitationally lensed can be distorted by small microlenses along the line of sight. Microlenses with masses of a few tens of solar masses, and that are close to a critical curve in the…
A radio-based search for strong gravitational lensing, with image separations in the range 160-300 milliarcsec (mas), has yielded a null result for a sample of 1665 sources (Augusto, Wilkinson & Browne 1998) whose mean redshift is estimated…
The possibility that a fraction of the dark matter is comprised of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) remains unclear, especially in the 20-100 $M_{\odot}$ window. MACHOs could make up binaries, whose mergers may be detected by LIGO as…
Strong gravitational magnifications enable to detect faint background sources, resolve their internal structures, and even identify individual stars in distant galaxies. Highly magnified individual stars allow various applications,…
Since the first discovery of microlensing events nearly two decades ago, gravitational microlensing has accumulated tens of TBytes of data and developed into a powerful astrophysical technique with diverse applications. The review starts…
A significant fraction of non-baryonic or baryonic dark matter in galactic halos may consist of MASsive Compact Objects (MASCOs) with mass M=10^{1-4}M_{sun}. Possible candidates for such compact objects include primordial black holes or…
Stars in globular clusters can act either as sources for MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) located along the line of sight or as lenses for more distant background stars. Although the expected rate of microlensing events…
Gravitational lensing describes the bending of the trajectories of light and gravitational waves due to the gravitational potential of a massive object. Strong lensing by galaxies can create multiple images with different overall…
We present the first unambiguous case of external variability of a radio gravitational lens, CLASS B1600+434. The VLA 8.5-GHz difference light curve of the lensed images, taking the proper time-delay into account, shows the presence of…
Microlensing of stars in strongly lensed galaxies can lead to temporary extreme magnification factors ($\mu\!>\!1000$), enabling their detection at high redshifts. Following the discovery of Icarus, several stars at cosmological distances…
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 cold dark matter models, a galaxy's dark matter halo is more spatially extended than its stars. However, even though the five well-constrained gravitational lenses with time delay measurements must have similar dark matter distributions,…