Constraining Compact Dark Matter with Quasar Equivalent Widths from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release
| dc.creator | Wiegert, Craig C. | |
| dc.date | 2003-07-27 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T02:09:04Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T02:09:04Z | |
| dc.description | Cosmologically distributed compact dark matter objects with masses in the approximate range of 0.001 to 1 solar masses can amplify the continuum emission of a quasar through gravitational microlensing, without appreciably affecting its broad emission lines. This will produce a statistical excess of weak-lined quasars in the observed distribution of spectral line equivalent widths, an effect that scales with the amount of compact dark matter in the universe. Using the large flux-limited sample of quasar spectra from the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), I demonstrate the absence of a strong microlensing signal. This leads to a constraint on the cosmological density of compact objects of Omega_c < 0.03, relative to the critical density, on Jupiter- to solar-mass scales. For compact objects clustered in galaxy halos, this limit is expected to be weaker by at most a factor of two. I also forecast the improvements to this constraint that may be possible in a few years with the full SDSS quasar catalog. | |
| dc.description | 23 figures, submitted to ApJ | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0307465 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0307465 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/6296 | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics | |
| dc.title | Constraining Compact Dark Matter with Quasar Equivalent Widths from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release | |
| dc.type | text |