Related papers: Rotating Halos and the Microlensing MACHO Mass Est…
The recent astrometric data of hundreds of millions of stars from Gaia DR3 has allowed a precise determination of the Milky Way rotation curve up to $28$~kpc. The data suggests a rapid decline in the density of dark matter beyond $19$~kpc.…
Recently the French EROS collaboration and the American-Australian MACHO collaboration have reported the observation of altogether three possible microlensing events by monitoring over several years the brightness of millions of stars in…
Recent interest in primordial black holes as a possible dark matter candidate has motivated the reanalysis of previous methods for constraining massive astrophysical compact objects in the Milky Way halo and beyond. In order to derive these…
Recently, we determined a lower bound for the Milky Way mass in a point mass approximation. This result was obtained for most general spherically symmetric phase-space distribution functions consistent with a measured radial velocity…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We present the basics of microlensing and give an overview of the results obtained so far. We also describe a scenario in which dark clusters of MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) and cold molecular clouds (mainly of $H_2$)…
The light curves of the two images of the double quasar Q0957+561 as obtained by Kundic et al. (1997) are almost identical, except for an overall time delay and scaling factor. This allows us to put limits on the amount of microlensing that…
A parameterized model of the mass distribution within the Milky Way is fitted to the available observational constraints. The most important single parameter is the ratio of the scale length R_d* of the stellar disk to R0. The disk and…
We summarize our studies on the determination of the mass of the dark matter halo, based on observations of rotation curves of test particles or of the gravitational lensing. As we show, it is not uncommon that some studies on the nature of…
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…
The MACHO project is searching for dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (Machos), by monitoring the brightness of millions of stars in the Magellanic Clouds to search for gravitational microlensing events. Analysis of our…
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 form of Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) with…
If the density distribution \rho (r) of MACHOs is spherically symmetric with respect to the Galactic center, it is shown that the minimal total mass M_{min}^{{ MACHO}} of the MACHOs is 1.7\times 10^{10}\sol \tau_{-6.7}^{{ LMC}} where…
We report on a search for long duration microlensing events towards the Large Magellanic Cloud. We find none, and therefore put limits on the contribution of high mass objects to the Galactic dark matter. At 95% confidence level we exclude…
We simulate the evolution of halo wide binaries in the presence of MAssive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) and compare our results to the sample of wide binaries of Chaname & Gould (2003). The observed distribution is well fit by a single…
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…
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…