Research on Galactic Dark Matter Implied by Gravitational Microlensing

Details Research on Galactic Dark Matter Implied by Gravitational Microlensing Research on Galactic Dark Matter Implied by Gravitational Microlensing

Jul 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998phdt.........2p&link_type=abstract

Thesis (PHD). THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO , Source DAI-B 59/01, p. 260, Jul 1998, 276 pages.

Statistics

Baryonic Objects, Halo

Scientific paper

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for dark matter comes from the observation of the rotation curves of spiral galaxies. The dynamical mass implied exceeds that in visible components by about a factor of three. We will place this problem in the general context of dark matter in the Universe and see that galactic halos could be composed of compact baryonic objects. Using the effect of gravitational microlensing, the French experiment EROS (Experience de Recherche d'Objets Sombres) monitored stars in the Magellanic clouds for four years to search for dark halo objects. It excluded that objects in the mass range 5e-7 to 0.02 solar mass made up more than 20% of a standard halo. With a new set-up, EROS2 probes the high mass range, where a different line-of-sight is investigated: the Small Magellanic Cloud. The EROS2 scientific objectives, set-up and data acquisition pipeline are explained. We present a new stellar detection algorithm which increases the number of stars we are able to monitor. The analysis of the first year SMC data (5 million light curves) is described in detail, and one event compatible with microlensing is identified. Assuming a standard halo, a likelihood analysis allows the estimate of its most probable mass to about 1.7 solar masses. One of the main sources of systematics in crowded fields, blending, is studied thoroughly with the help of simulated images, and its impact on the efficiency quantified. Finally, a variety of realistic Galactic models are presented. For each of them, the optical depth and event rate are calculated and compared to the values derived from the detection of one candidate. The lack of statistics (and temporal baseline) calls for a second year of data, but we are already sensitive to objects in the mass range 0.01 to 1 solar mass. Because they probe different regions of the halo, the comparison of the LMC and SMC results will soon allow us to better constrain the shape and nature of our Halo.

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