Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1996-09-09
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Latex
Scientific paper
One of the most important problems in astrophysics concerns the nature of the dark matter in galactic halos, whose presence is implied mainly by the observed flat rotation curves in spiral galaxies. Due to the Pauli exclusion principle it can be shown that neutrinos cannot be a major constituent of the halo dark matter. As far as cold dark matter is concerned there might be a discrepancy between the results of the N-body simulations and the measured rotation curves for dwarf galaxies. A fact this, if confirmed, which would exclude cold dark matter as a viable candidate for the halo dark matter. In the framework of a baryonic scenario the most plausible candidates are brown or white dwarfs and cold molecular clouds (mainly of $H_2$). The former can be detected with the ongoing microlensing experiments. In fact, the French collaboration EROS and the American-Australian collaboration MACHO have reported the observation of altogether $\sim$ 10 microlensing events by monitoring during several years the brightness of millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. In particular, the MACHO team announced the discovery of 8 microlensing candidates by analysing their first 2 years of observations. This would imply that the halo dark matter fraction in form of MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) is of the order of 45-50% assuming a standard spherical halo model. The most accurate way to get information on the mass of the MACHOs is to use the method of mass moments, which leads to an average mass of 0.27$M_{\odot}$.
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