http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.03665
I show that a recently discovered star cluster near the center of the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Eridanus II provides strong constraints on massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) of >~5 M_sun as the main component of dark matter. MACHO dark matter will dynamically heat the cluster, driving it to larger sizes and higher velocity dispersions until it dissolves into its host galaxy. The star cluster has a luminosity of just ~2000 L_sun and is relatively puffy, with a half-light radius of 13 pc, making it much more fragile than other known clusters in dwarf galaxies. For a wide range of plausible dark matter halo properties, Eri II’s star cluster combines with existing constraints from microlensing, wide binaries, and disk kinematics to rule out dark matter composed entirely of MACHOs from ~10$^{-7}$ M_sun up to arbitrarily high masses. The cluster in Eri II closes the ~20–100 M_sun window of allowed MACHO dark matter and provides much stronger constraints than wide Galactic binaries for MACHOs of up to thousands of Solar masses.
T. Brandt
Fri, 13 May 16
42/63
Comments: 5 pages, 2 figures, ApJL submitted
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