English

Subaru through a different lens: microlensing by extended dark matter structures

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2020-10-28 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

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 the setup. Using this information, we obtain constraints from the Subaru-HSC survey of M31 on the dark matter populations of NFW subhalos and boson stars of asteroid to Earth masses. These lens profiles capture the qualitative behavior of a wide range of dark matter substructures. We find that deviations from constraints on point-like lenses (e.g. primordial black holes and MACHOs) become visible for lenses of radius 0.1 RR_\odot and larger, with the upper bound on lens masses weakening with increasing lens size.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.12697,
  title  = {Subaru through a different lens: microlensing by extended dark matter structures},
  author = {Djuna Croon and David McKeen and Nirmal Raj and Zihui Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.12697},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:23:16.182Z