Interpretation of a Short-Term Anomaly in the Gravitational Microlensing Event MOA-2012-BLG-486
Abstract
A planetary microlensing signal is generally characterized by a short-term perturbation to the standard single lensing light curve. A subset of binary-source events can produce perturbations that mimic planetary signals, thereby introducing an ambiguity between the planetary and binary-source interpretations. In this paper, we present analysis of the microlensing event MOA-2012-BLG-486, for which the light curve exhibits a short-lived perturbation. Routine modeling not considering data taken in different passbands yields a best-fit planetary model that is slightly preferred over the best-fit binary-source model. However, when allowed for a change in the color during the perturbation, we find that the binary-source model yields a significantly better fit and thus the degeneracy is clearly resolved. This event not only signifies the importance of considering various interpretations of short-term anomalies, but also demonstrates the importance of multi-band data for checking the possibility of false-positive planetary signals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1308.5762,
title = {Interpretation of a Short-Term Anomaly in the Gravitational Microlensing Event MOA-2012-BLG-486},
author = {K. -H. Hwang and J. -Y. Choi and I. A. Bond and T. Sumi and C. Han and B. S. Gaudi and A. Gould and V. Bozza and J. -P. Beaulieu and Y. Tsapras and F. Abe and D. P. Bennett and C. S. Botzler and P. Chote and M. Freeman and A. Fukui and D. Fukunaga and P. Harris and Y. Itow and N. Koshimoto and C. H. Ling and K. Masuda and Y. Matsubara and Y. Muraki and S. Namba and K. Ohnishi and N. J. Rattenbury and To. Saito and D. J. Sullivan and W. L. Sweatman and D. Suzuki and P. J. Tristram and K. Wada and N. Yamai and P. C. M. Yock and A. Yonehara and L. Andrade de Almeida and D. L. DePoy and Subo Dong and F. Jablonski and Y. K. Jung and A. Kavka and C. -U. Lee and H. Park and R. W. Pogge and I. -G. Shin and J. C. Yee and M. D. Albrow and E. Bachelet and V. Batista and S. Brillant and J. A. R. Caldwell and A. Cassan and A. Cole and E. Corrales and Ch. Coutures and S. Dieters and D. Dominis Prester and J. Donatowicz and P. Fouqué and J. Greenhill and U. G. Jørgensen and S. R. Kane and D. Kubas and J. -B. Marquette and R. Martin and P. Meintjes and J. Menzies and K. R. Pollard and A. Williams and D. Wouters and D. M. Bramich and M. Dominik and K. Horne and P. Browne and M. Hundertmark and S. Ipatov and N. Kains and C. Snodgrass and I. A. Steele and R. A. Street},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.5762},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures and ApJ submitted