English

Microlens Masses from 1-D Parallaxes and Heliocentric Proper Motions

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-06-22 v2 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Abstract

One-dimensional (1-D) microlens parallaxes can be combined with heliocentric lens-source relative proper motion measurements to derive the lens mass and distance, as suggested by Ghosh et al. (2004). Here I present the first mathematical anlysis of this procedure, which I show can be represented as a quadratic equation. Hence, it is formally subject to a two-fold degeneracy. I show that this degeneracy can be broken in many cases using the relatively crude 2-D parallax information that is often available for microlensing events. I also develop an explicit formula for the region of parameter space where it is more difficult to break this degeneracy. Although no mass/distance measurements have yet been made using this technique, it is likely to become quite common over the next decade.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1408.0797,
  title  = {Microlens Masses from 1-D Parallaxes and Heliocentric Proper Motions},
  author = {Andrew Gould},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.0797},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society