Microlensing by the Milky Way halo

The measurements of the possible gravitational microlensing events are analysed with a simple yet accurate disc–halo model of the Milky Way galaxy. This comprises a luminous exponential disc embedded in a flattened dark matter halo with density varying like distance^−1.8. The inclusion of a disc has the important effect of lowering the implied masses of the dark matter objects. For the possible detection reported by Alcock et al., the inferred mass of the lens lies in the range ˜ $${0.01-0.15}\enspace\text{M}\odot$$. The candidate events reported by Aubourg et al. have slightly larger implied masses of ˜ $${0.025-0.35}$ and $${0.03-0.45}\enspace\text{M}\odot$$. These are consistent with the deflectors being either brown dwarfs or low-mass stars. If there is no disc dark matter and the halo is completely composed of baryonic dark objects of typical mass ˜ $$0.08\enspace\text{M}\odot$$, the monitoring of 1.8 × 10⁶ stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud will provide at least 8–9 detections a year, in the limit of 100 per cent efficiency.