Limits on the cosmological abundance of supermassive compact objects from a millilensing search in gamma-ray burst data

A new search for the gravitational lens effects of a significant cosmological density of supermassive compact objects (SCOs) on gamma-ray bursts has yielded a null result. We inspected the timing data of 774 BATSE-triggered GRBs for evidence of millilensing: repeated peaks similar in light-curve shape and spectra. Our null detection leads us to conclude that, in all candidate universes simulated, Omega_SCO < 0.1 is favored for 10⁵ < M_SCO/M_odot < 10⁹, while in some universes and mass ranges the density limits are as much as 10 times lower. Therefore, a cosmologically significant population of SCOs near globular cluster mass neither came out of the primordial universe, nor condensed at recombination.