We announce the discovery of a microlensing planetary system, in which a sub-Saturn planet is orbiting an ultracool dwarf host. We detect the planetary system by analyzing the short-timescale (tE∼4.4~days) lensing event KMT-2018-BLG-0748. The central part of the light curve exhibits asymmetry due to the negative deviations in the rising part and the positive deviations in the falling part. We find that the deviations are explained by a binary-lens model with a mass ratio between the lens components of q∼2×10−3. The short event timescale together with the small angular Einstein radius, θE∼0.11~mas, indicate that the mass of the planet host is very small. The Bayesian analysis conducted under the assumption that the planet frequency is independent of the host mass indicates that the mass of the planet is Mp=0.18−0.10+0.29MJ, and the mass of the host, Mh=0.087−0.047+0.138M⊙, is near the star/brown dwarf boundary, but the estimated host mass is sensitive to the assumption about the planet hosting probability. High-resolution follow-up observations would lead to revealing the nature of the planet host.
@article{arxiv.2007.05204,
title = {KMT-2018-BLG-0748Lb: Sub-Saturn Microlensing Planet Orbiting an Ultracool Host},
author = {Cheongho Han and In-Gu Shin and Youn Kil Jung and Doeon Kim and Jennifer C. Yee and Michael D. Albrow and Sun-Ju Chung and Andrew Gould and Kyu-Ha Hwang and Chung-Uk Lee and Yoon-Hyun Ryu and Yossi Shvartzvald and Weicheng Zang and Sang-Mok Cha and Dong-Jin Kim and Hyoun-Woo Kim and Seung-Lee Kim and Dong-Joo Lee and Yongseok Lee and Byeong-Gon Park and Richard W. Pogge},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.05204},
year = {2020}
}