EROS and MACHO Combined Limits on Planetary-Mass Dark Matter in the Galactic Halo
Abstract
The EROS and MACHO collaborations have each published upper limits on the amount of planetary-mass dark matter in the Galactic halo obtained from gravitational microlensing searches. In this Letter, the two limits are combined to give a much stronger constraint on the abundance of low-mass MACHOs. Specifically, objects with masses 10-7 Msolar<~m<~10-3 Msolar make up less than 25% of the halo dark matter for most models considered, and less than 10% of a standard spherical halo is made of MACHOs in the 3.5×10-7 Msolar<m<4.5×10-5 Msolar mass range.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- May 1998
- DOI:
- 10.1086/311355
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/9803082
- Bibcode:
- 1998ApJ...499L...9A
- Keywords:
-
- COSMOLOGY: DARK MATTER;
- COSMOLOGY: GRAVITATIONAL LENSING;
- STARS: LOW-MASS;
- BROWN DWARFS;
- Cosmology: Dark Matter;
- Cosmology: Gravitational Lensing;
- Stars: Low-Mass;
- Brown Dwarfs;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 8 pages, 4 figures, submitted to ApJ Letters