The nature of dark matter in our Galaxy.

Abstract

The existence within galaxies of unidentified matter whose only action is gravity has been known since nearly two decades. Important information on its location has been obtained in the very last few years, thanks to deep stellar surveys, to the microlensing events detected by the EROS, MACHO and OGLE experiments that trace dark stellar-size objects as well as to the quite recent HIPPARCOS data that have determined very accurately the stellar phase-space and whence the gravitational potential in the solar neighborhood. The authors review these results and discuss what they imply on the nature of dark matter within our Galaxy.