Microlensing

I will review the microlensing and pixel lensing techniques and show how they play a
fundamental role in the searches for galactic dark matter, in the study of the galactic structure and in
detecting planets around faint stars whose cahacteristics are in general not accessible to other methods.
We show that dedicated and well planned experiments would even allow to detect more exotic objects
as primordial massive black holes (if any) in nearby galaxies and/or to put strong constraints on
their existence.