Whither do the microlensing agents rove?

DE RUJULA, A.; GIUDICE, G. F.; MOLLERACH, S.; ROULET, E.

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 1995 vol. 275 p. 545 - 556

0035-8711

The EROS and MACHO collaborations have reported observations of light curves of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) that are compatible with gravitational microlensing by intervening massive objects. The OGLE and MACHO teams have also seen similar events in the direction of the Galactic bulge. Current data are insufficient to decide whether the lensing agents are dark matter constituents of the non-luminous Galactic halo, or whether they belong to a more conventional population, such as that of faint stars in the Galactic spheroid, in its thin or thick discs, or in their possible LMC counterparts. We discuss in detail how further observations of microlensing rates, and of the moments of the distribution of event durations, can help resolve the issue of the location of the lensing objects, and eventually provide information on their mass function.