Related papers: A quest for weak objects and for invisible stars
Dark matter may consist of weakly interacting elementary particles or of macroscopic compact objects. We show that the statistics of the gravitational lensing of high redshift supernovae strongly discriminate between these two classes of…
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…
Dark matter in the Universe consisting of macroscopic objects such as primordial black holes may cause gravitational lensing of distant objects. The magnification associated with lensing will lead to additional scatter in the received flux…
White dwarf binaries are fundamental astrophysical probes. They represent ideal laboratories to test the models of binary evolution, which also apply to the sources of gravitational waves, whose detection led to the award of the 2017 Nobel…
Our knowledge of the magnetism in white dwarfs is based on an observational dataset that is biased in favour of stars with very strong magnetic fields. Most of the field measurements available in the literature have a relatively low…
To set useful limits on the abundance of small-scale dark matter halos (subhalos) in a galaxy scale, we have carried out mid-infrared imaging and integral-field spectroscopy for a sample of quadruple lens systems showing anomalous flux…
We provide a status report on our search for dark matter in our Galaxy in the form of massive compact halo objects (or Machos), using gravitational microlensing of background stars. This search uses a very large format CCD camera on the…
We present preliminary results from our archival Spitzer Space Telescope program aimed at characterizing the mid-IR properties of compact objects, both isolated and in binary systems, i.e. white dwarfs, X-ray binaries, cataclysmic…
The nature of the dark matter in the haloes of galaxies is one of the outstanding questions in astrophysics. All stellar candidates, until recently thought to be likely baryonic contributions to the Halo of our Galaxy, are shown to be ruled…
A wide field space-based imaging telescope is necessary to fully exploit the technique of observing dark matter via weak gravitational lensing. This first paper in a three part series outlines the survey strategies and relevant instrumental…
The dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are some of the most dark-matter-dominated objects known. Due to their proximity, high dark matter content, and lack of astrophysical backgrounds, dwarf spheroidal galaxies are widely…
We investigate gravitational microlensing signals produced by a spatially extended object transiting in front of a finite-sized source star. The most interesting features arise for lens and source sizes comparable to the Einstein radius of…
Simulations of dark matter show a discrepancy between the expected number of Galactic dark matter sub-halos and how many have been optically observed. Some of these unseen satellites may exist as dark dwarf galaxies: sub-halos like dwarf…
Systematic exploration of the observable parameter space, covered by large digital sky surveys spanning a range of wavelengths, will be one of the primary modes of research with a Virtual Observatory (VO). This will include searches for…
At present, dwarf spheroidal galaxies satellites of the Milky Way may represent the best astrophysical objects for dark matter (DM) searches with gamma-ray telescopes. They present the highest mass-to-light ratios known in the Universe.…
Observations at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths promise to revolutionize the study of high redshift galaxies and AGN by providing a unique probe of the conditions within heavily extinguished regions of star formation and nuclear…
Electroweak WIMPs are under intense scrutiny from direct detection, indirect detection, and collider experiments. Nonetheless the pure (pseudo-Dirac) higgsino, one of the simplest such WIMPs, remains elusive. We present an up-to-date…
There should be not doubt by now that neutrino telescopes are competitive instruments when it comes to searches for dark matter. Their large detector volumes collect hundreds of neutrinos per day. They scrutinize the whole sky continuously,…
The nature of the dark matter in the Halo of our Galaxy remains a mystery. Arguments are presented that the dark matter does not consist of ordinary stellar or substellar objects, i.e., the dark matter is not made of faint stars, brown…
Cosmological measurements indicate that a large component of non-visible gravitating matter is present in the universe. A common hypothesis for its origin is a weakly interacting, massive particle. Annihilations or decays of such particles…