Constraining Compact Dark Matter with Quasar Equivalent Widths from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release

Abstract

Cosmologically distributed compact dark matter objects with masses in the approximate range of 0.001 to 1 solar masses can amplify the continuum emission of a quasar through gravitational microlensing, without appreciably affecting its broad emission lines. This will produce a statistical excess of weak-lined quasars in the observed distribution of spectral line equivalent widths, an effect that scales with the amount of compact dark matter in the universe. Using the large flux-limited sample of quasar spectra from the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), I demonstrate the absence of a strong microlensing signal. This leads to a constraint on the cosmological density of compact objects of Omega_c < 0.03, relative to the critical density, on Jupiter- to solar-mass scales. For compact objects clustered in galaxy halos, this limit is expected to be weaker by at most a factor of two. I also forecast the improvements to this constraint that may be possible in a few years with the full SDSS quasar catalog.