Gravitational Nanolensing from Subsolar Mass Dark Matter Halos

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to detect nanolensing caused by subsolar mass dark matter halos within galaxies, proposing methods for future astronomical surveys to identify these signals.

Contribution

It introduces techniques for detecting gravitational nanolensing from subsolar mass halos, advancing the search for small-scale dark matter structures.

Findings

Subsolar mass halos can produce detectable nanolensing events.

Nanolensing events have shorter durations and smaller amplitudes than stellar microlensing.

Proposed methods are suitable for upcoming large-scale surveys.

Abstract

We investigate the feasibility of extracting the gravitational nanolensing signal due to the presence of subsolar mass halos within galaxy-sized dark matter halos. We show that subsolar mass halos in a lensing galaxy can cause strong nanolensing events with shorter durations and smaller amplitudes than microlensing events caused by stars. We develop techniques that can be used in future surveys such as Pan-STARRS, LSST and OMEGA to search for the nanolensing signal from subsolar mass halos.