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Hubble deep field constraint on baryonic dark matter

Mar, 1996
11 pages
Published in:
  • Astrophys.J.Lett. 466 (1996) L55
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DOI:
Report number:
  • OSU-TA-5-96
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Abstract: (arXiv)
We use a new technique to search for faint red stars in the Hubble Deep Field (HDF) imaged by the Wide Field Camera (WFC2) on the {\it Hubble Space Telescope}. We construct a densely sampled stellar light profile from a set of undersampled images of bright stars in a low-latitude field. Comparison of this stellar light profile to densely sampled profiles of individual objects in the HDF constructed from multiple undersampled dithers allows us to distinguish unambiguously between stars and galaxies to I=26.3I=26.3. We find no stars with V−I>1.8V-I>1.8 in the outer 90\% of the volume probed. This result places strong and general constraints on the II band luminosity of the constituents of the Galactic dark halo: MI>15.9+53log⁡(f0.5M⊙M)(V−I>1.8), M_I > 15.9 + {5\over 3}\log\biggl(f{0.5 M_\odot\over M}\biggr) \qquad (V-I>1.8), where MM is the mass of the objects and ff is their density as a fraction of the local halo density, taken to be ρ0=9×10 −3 M⊙pc −3.Ifthehaloismadeofwhitedwarfs,thislimitimpliesthattheseobjectshave\rho_0=9\times 10~{-3}\,M_\odot pc~{-3}. If the halo is made of white dwarfs, this limit implies that these objects have M_V\gsim 18.4and and V-I\gsim 2.5.Thatis,theyare. That is, they are \gsim 2magnitudesfainterthantheendofthediskwhitedwarfsequence,and magnitudes fainter than the end of the disk white dwarf sequence, and \gsim 1magnitudefainterthantheregimepreviouslyprobedbydirectobservation.Faintreddwarfsaccountfor magnitude fainter than the regime previously probed by direct observation. Faint red dwarfs account for <1\%oftheGalacticdarkhalofor of the Galactic dark halo for M_I<14,and, and <6\%for for M_I<15$ at the 95\% confidence level.