Searching for isolated black holes with astrometric microlensing using HST

Casey Lam  ✧  University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

We present the analysis of five black (BH) hole candidates identified from MOA and OGLE between 2009-2011. Archival HST astrometric data from 2009-2017 is jointly analyzed with the MOA and OGLE lightcurves in order to measure the masses of the lens. One of the five targets is likely a low-mass BH. We also compare the full sample of 5 candidates to theoretical expectations on the number and masses of BHs in the Milky Way detectable via microlensing. Due to the small size as well as sample selection issues, the resulting constraints are weak; however, they are consistent with the theoretical expectation of 2 hundred million BHs in the Milky Way.