Bibcode
Esteban-Gutiérrez, A.; Mediavilla, E.; Jiménez-Vicente, J.; Agües-Paszkowsky, N.; Muñoz, J. A.; Heydenreich, S.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal
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4
2022
Journal
Citations
6
Refereed citations
6
Description
We present a simple but general argument that strongly limits the abundance of primordial black holes (PBHs) (or other unknown population of compact objects) with masses similar to those determined by LIGO/Virgo from BH binary mergers. We show that quasar microlensing can be very sensitive to the mass of the lenses, and that it is able to distinguish between stars and BHs of high mass, when the finite size of the source is taken into account. A significant presence of massive BHs would produce frequent high-flux magnifications (except for unrealistically large sources), which have been very rarely observed. On the contrary, a typical stellar population would induce flux magnifications consistent with the observations. This result excludes PBHs (or any type of compact object) in the mass range determined by LIGO/Virgo as the main dark matter constituents in the lens galaxies.
Related projects
Relativistic and Theoretical Astrophysics
Introduction Gravitational lenses are a powerful tool for Astrophysics and Cosmology. The goals of this project are: i) to obtain a robust determination of the Hubble constant from the time delay measured between the images of a lensed quasar; ii) to study the individual and statistical properties of dark matter condensations in lens galaxies from
Evencio
Mediavilla Gradolph