Limiting the Abundance of LIGO/Virgo Black Holes with Microlensing Observations of Quasars of Finite Size

Abstract

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.

arXiv comment5 pages, 1 figure

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Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Probing compact dark matter objects with microlensing in gravitationally lensed quasars
• A fast algorithm for simulating light curves of stars at extreme magnification affected by microlensing
• Modelling uncertainties in wide binary constraints on primordial black holes
• Accurate modelling of extragalactic microlensing by compact objects