Paper detail

Whither do the microlensing Brown Dwarfs rove?

The EROS and MACHO collaborations have reported observations of light curves of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud that are compatible with gravitational microlensing by intervening massive objects, presumably Brown-Dwarf stars. 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 Brown-Dwarfs are dark-matter constituents of the non-luminous galactic Halo, or belong to a more conventional population, such as that of faint stars in the galactic Spheroid, in its Thin or Thick Disks, 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 Brown-Dwarf location, and eventually provide information on the mass function of the dark objects.