Related papers: Probing Structures of Distant Extrasolar Planets w…
To improve the planet detection efficiency, current planetary microlensing experiments are focused on high-magnification events searching for planetary signals near the peak of lensing light curves. However, it is known that central…
We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit their central stars. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and…
We investigate directly imaging exoplanets around eclipsing binaries, using the eclipse as a natural tool for dimming the binary and thus increasing the planet to star brightness contrast. At eclipse, the binary becomes point-like, making…
We investigate high-magnification events caused by wide binary stellar and planetary systems under the moderately strong finite-source effect where the diameter of the source star is comparable with the caustics induced by a binary…
Gravitational microlensing finds planets through their gravitational influence on the light coming from a more distant background star. The presence of the planet is then inferred from the tell-tale brightness variations of the background…
We analyze PLANET collaboration data for MACHO 97-BLG-41, the only microlensing event observed to date in which the source transits two disjoint caustics. The PLANET data, consisting of 46 V-band and 325 I-band observations from five…
Our work examines the detectability of tidally distorted solid exoplanets in synchronous rotation. Previous work has shown that tidally distorted shapes of close-in gas giants can give rise to radius underestimates and subsequently density…
We show that exoplanets in the M31 galaxy may be detected with the pixel-lensing method by using telescopes making high cadence observations of an ongoing microlensing event. Although the mean mass for detectable exoplanets is about $2…
There are different methods for finding exoplanets such as radial spectral shifts, astrometrical measurements, transits, timing etc. Gravitational microlensing (including pixel-lensing) is among the most promising techniques with the…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
To maximize the number of planet detections, current microlensing follow-up observations are focusing on high-magnification events which have a higher chance of being perturbed by central caustics. In this paper, we investigate the…
Microlensing detections of cool planets are important for the construction of an unbiased sample to estimate the frequency of planets beyond the snow line, which is where giant planets are thought to form according to the core accretion…
The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…
All the four giant planets in our Solar System have rings, but their characteristics are very different. The rings consist of a number of small particles, although individual particles have not been directly imaged. Near the central planet,…
The close-in extrasolar giant planets [CEGPs], $\ltorder$ 0.05 AU from their parent stars, may have a large component of optically reflected light. We present theoretical optical photometric light curves and polarization curves for the CEGP…
Here, we revisit the polarization signal in caustic-crossing binary microlensing and introduce the maps of the polarization signals of the source star as a function of its position projected on the lens plane. The behavior of these maps…
With its planet detection efficiency reaching a maximum for orbital radii between 1 and 10 AU, microlensing provides a unique sensitivity to planetary systems similar to our own around galactic and even extragalactic stars acting as lenses…
We estimate the conditions for detectability of two planets in a 2/1 mean-motion resonance from radial velocity data, as a function of their masses, number of observations and the signal-to-noise ratio. Even for a data set of the order of…
Motivated by debris disk studies, we investigate the gravitational microlensing of background starlight by a planetesimal disk around a foreground star. We use dynamical survival models to construct a plausible example of a planetesimal…
CONTEXT. It is theoretically possible for rings to have formed around extrasolar planets in a similar way to that in which they formed around the giant planets in our solar system. However, no such rings have been detected to date. AIMS: We…