Related papers: Microlensing Constraints on the Stellar and Planet…
Microlensing and pixel-lensing surveys play a fundamental role in the searches for galactic dark matter and in the study of the galactic structure. Recent observations suggest the presence of a population of old white dwarfs with high…
In recent years free-loating planets (FFPs) have drawn a great interest among astrophysicists. Gravitational microlensing is a unique and exclusive method for their investigation which may allow obtaining precious information about their…
Our knowledge of the birth mass function of neutron stars and black holes is based on observations of binary systems but the binary evolution likely affects the final mass of the compact object. Gravitational microlensing allows us to…
Microlensing can be used to discover exoplanets of a wide range of masses with orbits beyond ~ 1 AU, and even free-floating planets. The WFIRST mission will use microlensing to discover approximately 1600 planets by monitoring ~100 million…
Observations of accretion disks around young brown dwarfs have led to the speculation that they may form planetary systems similar to normal stars. While there have been several detections of planetary-mass objects around brown dwarfs…
We present a new approach in the study of the Initial Mass function (IMF) in external galaxies based on quasar microlensing observations. We use measurements of quasar microlensing magnifications in 24 lensed quasars to estimate the average…
Since the major review by Scalo (1986), significant progress has been achieved in constraining the mass function (MF) of low-mass stars. The break-throughs which today allow a much better understanding of the stellar luminosity function…
Though free-floating planets (FFPs) may outpopulate their bound counterparts in the terrestrial-mass range, they remain one of the least explored exoplanet demographics. Due to their negligible electromagnetic emission at all wavelengths,…
By combining SIM observations with ground-based photometry, one can completely solve microlensing events seen toward the Galactic bulge. One could measure the mass, distance, and transverse velocity of ~100 lenses to ~5% precision in only…
Direct imaging has led to the discovery of several giant planet and brown dwarf companions. These imaged companions populate a mass, separation and age domain (mass>1MJup, orbits>5AU, age<1Gyr) quite distinct from the one occupied by…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) will perform a Galactic Exoplanet Survey (RGES) to discover bound exoplanets with semi-major axes greater than 1 au using gravitational microlensing. Roman will even be sensitive to planetary…
We present the first prediction for the mass distribution function of Galactic free-floating planets (FFPs) that aims to accurately include the relative contributions of multiple formation pathways and stellar populations. We derive our…
The abundances of dark matter halos in the universe are described by the halo mass function (HMF). It enters most cosmological analyses and parametrizes how the linear growth of primordial perturbations is connected to these abundances.…
Microlensing of distant stars in the Milky Way by the nearby high proper motion stars offers a direct way to precisely measure the masses of single lower main sequence stars and brown dwarfs.
Since 1995, more than 500 exoplanets have been detected using different techniques, of which 11 were detected with gravitational microlensing. Most of these are gravitationally bound to their host stars. There is some evidence of…
I review efforts to determine the form and any lower limit to the initial mass function in the Galactic disk, using observations of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the field, young clusters and star forming regions. I focus on the…
Quasar microlensing serves as a unique probe of discrete objects within galaxies and galaxy clusters. Recent advancement of the technique shows that it can constrain planet-scale objects beyond our native galaxy by studying their induced…
We report the analysis of planetary microlensing event OGLE-2018-BLG-1185, which was observed by a large number of ground-based telescopes and by the $Spitzer$ Space Telescope. The ground-based light curve indicates a low planet-host star…
The amount of mass contained in low-mass objects is investigated anew. Instead of using a mass-luminosity relation to convert a luminosity function to a mass function, I predict the mass-luminosity relation from assumed mass functions and…
We use recent microlensing observations toward the central bulge of the Galaxy to probe the overall stellar plus brown dwarf initial mass function (IMF) in these regions well within the brown dwarf domain. We find that the IMF is consistent…