Related papers: MACHOs and molecular clouds in galactic halos
The MACHO project is a search for dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs). The project has photometrically monitored tens of millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and…
Microlensing has established itself as a powerful new method for the detection of baryonic dark matter in the Galaxy. The theory of microlensing is sketched and its similarity with the optical effect of twinkling is explained. The bulk of…
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…
Results are presented from the MACHO collaboration gravitational microlensing search. The experiment and the nearly 50 microlensing events that have been detected are described. Limits on the baryonic content of the halo are given, as are…
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…
(Abridged) A close scrutiny of the microlensing results towards the Magellanic clouds reveals that the stars within the Magellanic clouds are major contributors as lenses, and the contribution of MACHOs to dark matter is 0 to 5%. The…
I review recent observations of molecular gas in the halo of the Milky Way and in the Magellanic Clouds. Far-ultraviolet absorption line studies of molecular hydrogen (H_2) with ORFEUS and FUSE have unveiled the presence of a diffuse…
We propose the existence of ultracompact minihalos as a new type of massive compact halo object (MACHO) and suggest an observational test to discover them. These new MACHOs are a powerful probe into the nature of dark matter and physics in…
For almost twenty years models of the Galaxy have included a dark halo responsible for supporting a substantial fraction of the local rotation velocity and a flat rotation curve at large distances. Estimates of the local halo density range…
The dark matter in the halos of galaxies may well be baryonic, and much of the mass within them could be in the form of clusters of substellar objects within which are embedded cold gas globules. Such halos might play an active role in…
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…
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 our search for microlensing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Analysis of 5.7 years of photometry on 11.9 million stars in the LMC reveals 13 - 17 microlensing events. This is significantly more than the $\sim$ 2 to 4…
The EROS-2 collaboration has conducted a survey of the Magellanic Clouds between July 1996 and February 2003 (6.7 years), in order to search for microlensing phenomena due to putative machos (massive astronomical compact halo objects).…
The nature and the location of the lenses discovered in the microlensing surveys done so far towards the LMC remain unclear. Motivated by these questions we compute the optical depth and particularly the number of expected events for…
Microlensing observations have now become a useful tool in searching for non--luminous astrophysical compact objects (brown dwarfs, faint stars, neutron stars, black holes and even planets). Originally conceived for establishing whether the…
Recent observational and theoretical studies on the three-dimensional (3D) space motions of the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively) have strongly suggested that the latest proper motion measurements of the…
The main aim of microlensing experiments is to evaluate the mean mass of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) and the mass fraction of the Galactic halo made by this type of dark matter. Statistical analysis shows that by considering a…
The gravitational microlensing experiments in the direction of Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) predict a large amount of white dwarfs ($\sim 20%$) filling the galactic halo. However, the predicted white dwarfs have not been observed at the…
We present results from a search for gravitational microlensing of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud by low mass objects in the Galactic Halo. The search uses the CCD light curves of about 82,000 stars with up to 46 measurements per night…