Related papers: Microlensing Searches for Exoplanets
Gravitational microlensing is a phenomenon that allows us to observe dark remnants of stellar evolution even if they no longer emit electromagnetic radiation. In particular, it can be useful to observe solitary neutron stars or stellar-mass…
Microlensing light curves are now being monitored with the precision required to detect small perturbations due to planetary companions of the primary lens. Microlensing is complementary to other planetary search techniques in its potential…
Microlensing planets occurring on faint source stars can escape detection due to their weak signals. Occasionally, detections of such planets are not reported due to the difficulty of extracting high-profile scientific issues on the…
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…
The status of searches for gravitational microlensing events of the stars in our galaxy and in other galaxies of the Local Group, the interpretation of the results, some theory, and prospects for the future are reviewed. The searches have…
The Galactic Exoplanet Survey Telescope (GEST) will observe a 2 square degree field in the Galactic bulge to search for extra-solar planets using a gravitational lensing technique. This gravitational lensing technique is the only method…
I present a review of astrometric techniques and instrumentation utilized to search for, detect, and characterize extra-solar planets. First, I briefly summarize the properties of the present-day sample of extrasolar planets, in connection…
We report the discovery of a planetary system in which a super-earth orbits a late M-dwarf host. The planetary system was found from the analysis of the microlensing event OGLE-2017-BLG-0482, wherein the planet signal appears as a…
Microlensing surveys search for the transient brightening of a background star that is the signature of gravitational lensing by a foreground compact object. This technique is an elegant way to search for astrophysical candidates that might…
The masses of stars including stellar remnants are almost exclusively known from binary systems. In this work, we study gravitational microlensing of faint background galaxies by isolated neutron stars (pulsars). We show that the resulting…
Microlensing of gravitationally lensed quasars by the stars in the foreground lens galaxy can be used to probe the nature of dark matter, to determine the mean stellar mass in the lens galaxy, and to measure the internal structure of quasar…
Pixel lensing is gravitational microlensing of unresolved stars. The main target explored up to now has been the nearby galaxy of Andromeda, M31. The scientific issues of interest are the search for dark matter in form of compact halo…
Gaudi & Gould (1997) showed that close companions of remote binary systems can be efficiently detected by using gravitational microlensing via the deviations in the lensing light curves induced by the existence of the lens companions. In…
Microlensing is increasingly gaining recognition as a powerful method for the detection and characterization of extra-solar planetary systems. Naively, one might expect that the probability of detecting the influence of more than one planet…
It is estimated that a star brighter than visual magnitude 17 is undergoing a detectable gravitational microlensing event, somewhere on the sky, at any given time. It is assumed that both lenses and sources are normal stars drawn from a…
Direct imaging of exoplanets will allow us to directly observe the planet in reflected light. Such a scenario may eventually allow for the possibility to scan the planetary surface for the presence of artificial structures made by alien…
Microlensing is the only method that can detect and measure mass of wide orbit, low mass, solar system analog exoplanets. Mass measurements of such planets would yield massive science on planet formation, exoplanet demographics, free…
Free-floating planets are recently drawing a special interest of the scientific community. Gravitational microlensing is up to now the exclusive method for the investigation of free-floating planets, including their spatial distribution…
If the Dark Matter consists of primordial black holes (PBHs), we show that gravitational lensing of stars being monitored by NASA's Kepler search for extra-solar planets can cause significant numbers of detectable microlensing events. A…
We consider the feasibility of directly observing gravitational microlensing in extra-galactic sources, whose stars are not generally resolved. This precludes use of the simple optical depth to microlensing formulation, which is applicable…