Wide binaries in an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy: discovery, population modeling, and a nail in the coffin of primordial black hole dark matter

[2509.04555] Wide binaries in an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy: discovery, population modeling, and a nail in the coffin of primordial black hole dark matter Skip to main content We gratefully acknowledge support from the Simons Foundation, member institutions , and all contributors.
By forward-modeling selection biases and chance alignments, we find that $1.25\pm0.25\%$ of Boötes I stars are members of wide binaries with separations beyond 5,000 au.
We show that our detection places new limits on primordial black hole dark matter, finding that compact objects with $M \gtrsim 5~{\rm M_\odot}$ cannot constitute more than $\sim1\%$ of the dark matter content.
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