The Impact of the Mass Spectrum of Lenses in Quasar Microlensing Studies. Constraints on a Mixed Population of Primordial Black Holes and Stars

Esteban-Gutiérrez, A.; Agües-Paszkowsky, N.; Mediavilla, E.; Jiménez-Vicente, J.; Muñoz, J. A.; Heydenreich, S.
Bibliographical reference

Contributions to the XIV.0 Scientific Meeting (virtual) of the Spanish Astronomical Society

Advertised on:
7
2020
Number of authors
6
IAC number of authors
2
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
We show that quasar microlensing magnification statistics induced by a population of point microlenses distributed according to a mass-spectrum can be very well approximated by that of a single-mass, "monochromatic", population. When the spatial resolution (physically defined by the source size) is small as compared with the Einstein radius, the mass of the monochromatic population matches the geometric mean of the mass-spectrum. Otherwise, the best-fit mass can be larger. Taking into account the degeneracy with the geometric mean, the interpretation of quasar microlensing observations under the hypothesis of a mixed population of primordial black holes and stars, makes the existence of a significant population of massive black holes (∼100 Msun) unlikely but allows, within a two-σ confidence interval, the presence of a large population (40% of the total mass) of very small black holes (∼0.01 Msun).