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Gravitational Lensing: How to See the Dark. J. E. Bjorkman University of Toledo Department of Physics & Astronomy. The Dark Between the Light. Dark Matter. How do we know its there? Answer: It affects the motion of everything we can see. Cluster Simulation Rotation Velocities.
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Gravitational Lensing: How to See the Dark J. E. BjorkmanUniversity of Toledo Department of Physics & Astronomy
Dark Matter • How do we know its there? • Answer: It affects the motion of everything we can see. • Cluster Simulation • Rotation Velocities
What is the Dark? • MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects) • low mass stars - "brown dwarves" • "almost" stars (planets, e.g. Jupiters) • black holes of less than solar mass • The VW graveyard • WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) • heavy neutrinos (10 to 1000 GeV) • new particles predicted by Supersymmetry - 'neutralinos' • exotic particles – e.g. axions (particles with mass < 0.1 eV) • Modified Gravity - on galactic scales.
Eclipse Astrometry • How do we know the stars moved?
Measuring the Dark • 0.5% of Universe is luminous • 99.5% of Universe is dark matter
Gravitational Microlenses • What are microlenses? • Stellar mass (or smaller) lenses • Images are unresovled (milliarcsecond separation) • Lens focuses light • Object appears brighter (several magnitudes!) • That’s absurd! • You’ll never see one in a million years! • Answer – just look at million stars every night!
Microlensing Searches • Toward the Magellanic Clouds • MACHO (MAssive CompactHalo Objects collaboration) • EROS (Experience pour la Recherche d'Objets sombres) • DUO (Disk Unseen Objects) • Toward the Galactic Bulge • OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) • Toward M31: • AGAPE (Andromeda Galaxy Amplified Pixel Experiment) • MEGA
Follow-Up Monitoring • PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) • Garching Spectroscopic Monitoring Group • GMAN (Global Microlensing Alert Network) • MPS (Microlensing Planet Search Project) • MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics)
Micolensing Results • They Exist! Future surveys will detect 1/day • Fewer than expected toward LMC/SMC • 50% of halo may be Machos (M = 0.5Msun) • More than expected toward Galactic center • Masses are few 0.1 Msun • May indicate presence of bar (i.e., Milky Way is a barred spiral) • About 10% are binary events • Planets • No definite detections, yet • Fewer that 1/3 of lenses have Jupiter-mass planets at 1-4 AU