Related papers: Gravitational Microlensing and the Galactic Halo
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…
Black hole-like objects with mass greater than $10 M_{\odot}$, as discovered by gravitational antennas, can produce long time-scale (several years) gravitational microlensing effects. Considered separately, previous microlensing surveys…
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 recently reported microlensing events of the LMC have caused much excitement, and have been interpreted as due to `dark objects' (MACHOs) in the halo of our Galaxy. It is shown here that the stars within the LMC play a dominant role as…
The nature of the several microlensing events observed by the MACHO team towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is still a subject of debate. Low-mass substellar objects and stars with masses larger than ~M_{sun} have been ruled out as…
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…
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…
We discuss the implications of the recent upward revision of the LMC microlensing rate by the MACHO Collaboration. We conclude: (i) A good case for the existence of baryonic dark matter in the halo has been made; (ii) The case for the…
We present preliminary results of the analysis of 5 years of MACHO data on the Galactic bulge microlensing events with clump giants as sources. This class of events allows one to obtain robust conclusions because relatively bright clump…
We suggest a new component of the Milky Way that can account for both the optical depth and event durations implied by microlensing searches targeting the Large Magellanic Cloud. This component, which represents less than 4% of the total…
In this article we review the astrophysical application of gravitational microlensing. After introducing the history of gravitational lensing, we present the key equations and concept of microlensing. The most frequent microlensing events…
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…
We describe a few recent microlensing results from the MACHO Collaboration. The aim of the MACHO Project was the identification and quantitative description of dark and luminous matter in the Milky Way using microlensing toward the…
In this fourth part of the series presenting the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) microlensing studies of the dark matter halo compact objects (MACHOs) we describe results of the OGLE-III monitoring of the Small Magellanic…
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 the form of Massive Halo Objects (MHO) with mass $\sim 0.1…
(Short version) The nature and the location of the lenses discovered in the microlensing surveys done so far towards the LMC remain unclear. This contribution is comprised of two distinct parts. In the first part, motivated by these…
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…
We present the results of the EROS2 search for the hidden galactic matter of the halo through the gravitational microlensing of stars in the Magellanic clouds. Microlensing was also searched for and found in the Milky-Way plane, where…
We calculate the optical depth and the number of events due to gravitational microlensing towards the Galactic bulge, the spiral arm directions $\gamma$ Scutum, $\beta$ Scutum, $\gamma$ Normae, $\vartheta$ Muscae and some dwarf galaxies in…
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…