Related papers: Augmenting WFIRST Microlensing with a Ground-based…
We show that a wide-field Kepler-like satellite in Solar orbit could obtain microlens parallaxes for several thousand events per year that are identified from the ground, yielding masses and distances for several dozen planetary events.…
In this work, we study detecting free-floating planets (FFPs) by microlensing observations towards the Magellanic Clouds (MCs). In comparison to similar events toward the Galactic bulge, an FFP in the Galactic halo produces on average…
Telescope and detector developments continuously enable deeper and more detailed studies of astronomical objects. Larger collecting areas, improvement in dispersion and detector techniques, and higher sensitivities allow detection of more…
Parallax measurements allow distances to celestial objects to be determined. Coupled with measurement of their position on the celestial sphere, it gives a full three-dimensional picture of the location of the objects relative to the…
To provide criteria in the selection of target events preferable for planetary lensing follow-up observations, we investigate the variation of the probability of detecting planetary signals depending on the observables of the lensing…
Simulations of planetary microlensing at high magnification that were carried out on a cluster computer are presented. It was found that the perturbations due to two-thirds of all planets occur in the time interval [-0.5t_FWHM, 0.5t_ FWHM]…
Microlensing has a unique advantage for detecting dark objects in the Milky Way, such as free-floating planets, neutron stars, and stellar-mass black holes. Most microlensing surveys focus on the Galactic bulge, where higher stellar density…
Microlensing events are now regularly being detected by monitoring the flux of a large number of potential sources and measuring the combined magnification of the images. This phenomenon could also be detected directly from the…
We analyze the limitations imposed by photon counting statistics on extracting useful information about MACHOs from Earth-based parallax observations of microlensing events. We find that if one or more large (say $2.5\,\rm m$) telescopes…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful method for discovering Isolated Stellar-Mass Black Holes(ISMBHs). These objects make long-duration microlensing events. To characterize these lensing objects by fully resolving the microlensing…
Gravitational microlensing events of high magnification provide exceptional sensitivity to the presence of low-mass planets orbiting the lens star, including planets with masses as low as that of Earth. The essential requirement for the…
Results from gravitational microlensing suggested the existence of a large population of free-floating planetary mass objects. The main conclusion from this work was partly based on constraints from a direct imaging survey. This survey…
An LSST-like survey of the Galactic plane (deep images every 3-4 days) could probe the Galactic distribution of planets by two distinct methods: gravitational microlensing of planets beyond the snow line and transits by planets very close…
WFIRST is NASA's first flagship mission with pre-defined core science programs to study dark energy and perform a statistical census of wide orbit exoplanets with a gravitational microlensing survey. Together, these programs are expected to…
Planet detection through microlensing is usually limited by a well-known degeneracy in the Einstein timescale $t_E$, which prevents mass and distance of the lens to be univocally determined. It has been shown that a satellite in…
We assess the relative merits of weak lensing surveys, using overlapping imaging data from the ground-based Subaru telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Our tests complement similar studies undertaken with simulated data. From…
Microlensing is a proven extrasolar planet search method that has already yielded the detection of four exoplanets. These detections have changed our understanding of planet formation ``beyond the snowline'' by demonstrating that…
Microlensing is generally thought to probe planetary systems only out to a few Einstein radii. Microlensing events generated by bound planets beyond about 10 Einstein radii generally do not yield any trace of their hosts, and so would be…
Gravitational microlensing events with high peak magnifications provide a much enhanced sensitivity to the detection of planets around the lens star. However, estimates of peak magnification during the early stages of an event by means of…
The MPF mission will provide a statistical census of exoplanets with masses greater than 0.1 Earth-masses and orbital separations ranging from 0.5AU to infinity. This includes analogs to all the Solar System's planets except for Mercury, as…