• Planète et Univers/Astrophysique/Cosmologie et astrophysique extra-galactique
  
• Planète et Univers/Astrophysique/Astrophysique galactique
  
• Planète et Univers/Astrophysique/Phénomènes cosmiques de haute energie
  
• Physique/Relativité Générale et Cosmologie Quantique
  
• Physique/Astrophysique/Astrophysique galactique
  
• Physique/Astrophysique/Cosmologie et astrophysique extra-galactique
  
• Physique/Physique des Hautes Energies - Phénoménologie
  
• Physique/Astrophysique
  
• Physique/Physique des Hautes Energies - Expérience
  
• Planète et Univers/Astrophysique
  

The discovery of black-hole-binary mergers through their gravitational wave (GW) emission has reopened the exciting possibility that dark matter is made, at least partly, of primordial black holes (PBHs). However, this scenario is challenged by many observational probes that set bounds on the relative PBH abundance across a broad range of viable PBH masses. Among these bounds, the ones coming from microlensing surveys are particularly severe in the mass range from $\sim 10^{-10}$ to a few M$_{\odot}$. The upper part of this range precisely corresponds to the mass window inside which the formation of PBHs should be boosted due to the QCD phase transition in the early Universe, which makes the microlensing probes particularly important. However, it has been argued that taking into account the inevitable clustering of PBH on small scales can significantly relax or entirely remove these bounds. While the impact of PBH clustering on the GW event rate has been studied in detail, its impact on the microlensing event rate has not yet been fully assessed. In this Letter, we address this issue, and show that clusters arising from PBH formed from Gaussian initial curvature perturbations do not alter the current microlensing constraints, as they are not sufficiently dense nor massive.

Signal predictions for galactic dark matter (DM) searches often rely on assumptions regarding the DM phase-space distribution function (DF) in halos. This applies to both particle (e.g. p-wave suppressed or Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation, scattering off atoms, etc.) and macroscopic DM candidates (e.g. microlensing of primordial black holes). As experiments and observations improve in precision, better assessing theoretical uncertainties becomes pressing in the prospect of deriving reliable constraints on DM candidates or trustworthy hints for detection. Most reliable predictions of DFs in halos are based on solving the steady-state collisionless Boltzmann equation (e.g. Eddington-like inversions, action-angle methods, etc.) consistently with observational constraints. One can do so starting from maximal symmetries and a minimal set of degrees of freedom, and then increasing complexity. Key issues are then whether adding complexity, which is computationally costy, improves predictions, and if so where to stop. Clues can be obtained by making predictions for zoomed-in hydrodynamical cosmological simulations in which one can access the true (coarse-grained) phase-space information. Here, we test an axisymmetric extension of the Eddington inversion to predict the full DM DF from its density profile and the total gravitational potential of the system. This permits to go beyond spherical symmetry, and is a priori well suited for spiral galaxies. We show that axisymmetry does not necessarily improve over spherical symmetry because the (observationally unconstrained) angular momentum of the DM halo is not generically aligned with the baryonic one. Theoretical errors are similar to those of the Eddington inversion though, at the 10-20% level for velocity-dependent predictions related to particle DM searches in spiral galaxies. We extensively describe the approach and comment on the results.

We for the first time provide self-consistent axisymmetric phase-space distribution models for the Milky Way’s dark matter (DM) halo which are carefully matched against the latest kinematic measurements through Bayesian analysis. By using broad priors on the individual galactic components, we derive conservative estimates for the astrophysical factors entering the interpretation of direct and indirect DM searches. While the resulting DM density profiles are in good agreement with previous studies, implying ρ⊙≈10⁻² M⊙/pc3, the presence of baryonic disc leads to significant differences in the local DM velocity distribution in comparison with the standard halo model. For direct detection, this implies roughly 30% stronger cross section limits at DM masses near detectors maximum sensitivity and up to an order of magnitude weaker limits at the lower end of the mass range. Furthermore, by performing Monte Carlo simulations for the upcoming DARWIN and DarkSide-20k experiments, we demonstrate that upon successful detection of heavy DM with coupling just below the current limits, the carefully constructed axisymmetric models can eliminate bias and reduce uncertainties by more then 50% in the reconstructed DM coupling and mass, but also help in a more reliable determination of the scattering operator. Furthermore, the velocity anisotropies induced by the baryonic disc can lead to significantly larger annual modulation amplitude and sizable differences in the directional distribution of the expected DM-induced events. For indirect searches, we provide the differential J factors and compute several moments of the relative velocity distribution that are needed for predicting the rate of velocity-dependent annihilations. However, we find that accurate predictions are still hindered by large uncertainties regarding the DM distribution near the galactic center.