Strong lensing constraints on primordial black holes as a dark matter candidate

Understand

Dark matter could comprise, at least in part, primordial black holes (PBH).

• To test this hypothesis, we present an approach to constrain the PBH mass ($M_{\rm{PBH}}$) and mass fraction ($f_{\rm{PBH}}$) from the flux ratios of quadruply imaged quasars.
• Our approach uses an approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) forward modeling technique to directly sample the posterior distribution of $M_{\rm{PBH}}$ and $f_{\rm{PBH}}$, while marginalizing over the subhalo mass function amplitude, spatial distribution, and the size of the lensed source.
• We apply our method to 11 quadruply-imaged quasars and derive a new constraint on the intermediate-mass area of PBH parameter space $10^4 $M$_{\odot}<M_{\rm{PBH}}<10^6$M$_\odot$.