Eppur non si trovano: Comments on the Primordial Black Hole Limits in the Galactic Halo

Abstract

In a recent arXiv post, Hawkins & Garcia-Bellido raised doubts on the results of 20-yr long OGLE photometric monitoring, which did not find a large number of gravitational microlensing events in the direction of the Magellanic Clouds. These results implied that primordial black holes and other compact objects with masses from 10^{-8} to 10^3 M_solar cannot comprise a substantial fraction of the Milky Way dark matter halo. Unfortunately, the Hawkins & Garcia-Bellido post contained a number of scientific misrepresentations of our work. Here, we demonstrate that their arguments lack a solid basis or are simply incorrect. As we show below, "and yet they are not found" - compact objects (including primordial black holes) in the dark halo of the Milky Way remain undetected, despite extensive searches.

submitted to Acta Astronomica, comment on arXiv:2509.05400