Star Counts From HST: Implications for Dark Matter

Abstract

Star counts made with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) probe four populations that are important for dark matter: disk, halo, bulge, and intergalactic. The disk mass function falls for masses M<0.6 Msun in sharp contrast to the rising Salpeter function usually assumed. The amount of ``observed'' disk material is therefore lower than commonly believed which implies the need for disk dark matter. Halo stars contribute no more than a few percent of the dark matter. Disk and halo together contribute no more than 10% of the observed microlensing optical depth toward the Large Magellanic Cloud. The bulge luminosity function is similar to that of the disk down to $M_V ~ 10$. If this similarity continues to the bottom of the main sequence, the bulge microlensing events can only be explained by a large population of brown dwarfs. Intergalactic stars in the Local Group have a density lower than the local halo density by at least $10^{-3.5}$.