Related papers: Self-Microlensing in Compact Binary Systems
We report periodic oscillations in the 15-year long optical light curve of the gravitationally lensed quasar QJ0158-4325. The signal is enhanced during a high magnification microlensing event undergone by the fainter lensed image of the…
We present photometry and analysis of the microlensing alert MACHO 96-LMC-2. The ~3% photometry provided by the Global Microlensing Alert Network follow--up effort reveals a periodic modulation in the lightcurve. We attribute this to…
We report the detection and mass measurement of a binary lens OGLE-2015-BLG-1285La,b, with the more massive component having $M_1>1.35\,M_\odot$ (80% probability). A main-sequence star in this mass range is ruled out by limits on blue…
A planetary microlensing event is characterized by a short-lived perturbation to the standard Paczy\'nski curve. Planetary perturbations typically last from a few hours to a day, and have maximum amplitudes, $\dmax$, of $5-20%$ of the…
The recent discovery of gravitational waves (GWs) from stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) provided direct evidence of the existence of these systems. BBH lenses would have gravitational microlensing signatures that are distinct from…
The formation rate of a close binary consisting of a super-massive black hole and a compact object (presumably a white dwarf) in galactic cusps is calculated with help of the so-called loss cone approximation. For a power low cusp of radius…
The first millisecond X-ray variability phenomena from accreting compact objects have recently been discovered with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. Three new phenomena are observed from low-mass X-ray binaries containing low-magnetic-field…
We analyze five years of PLANET photometry of microlensing events toward the Galactic bulge to search for the short-duration deviations from single lens light curves that are indicative of the presence of planetary companions to the primary…
After decades of searching, the true nature of dark matter still eludes us. One potential probe of the form of dark matter in galaxy clusters is to search for microlensing variability in the giant arcs and arclets. In this paper, a simple…
Primordial black holes (PBHs), hypothesized to be the result of density fluctuations during the early universe, are candidates for dark matter. When microlensing background stars, they cause a transient apparent enhancement of the flux.…
Terrestrial microlens parallax is one of the very few methods that can measure the mass and number density of isolated dark low-mass objects, such as old free-floating planets and brown dwarfs. Terrestrial microlens parallax can be measured…
Pixel microlensing, i.e. gravitational microlensing of unresolved stars, can be used to explore distant stellar systems, and as a bonus may be able to detect extragalactic planets. In these studies, binary-lens events with multiple…
We present radial velocity observations of four extremely low-mass (0.2 Msol) white dwarfs. All four stars show peak-to-peak radial velocity variations of 540 - 710 km/s with 1.0 - 5.9 hr periods. The optical photometry rules out…
Microlensing is a powerful technique to study the Galactic population of "dark" objects such as exoplanets both bound and unbound, brown dwarfs, low-luminosity stars, old white dwarfs, neutron stars, and almost the only way to study…
If stars at the lower end of the main sequence are responsible for the microlensing events observed in the Galactic bulge, then light from the lensing star contributes to the observed brightness. The background and lensing stars generally…
We present the analysis of a binary microlensing event KMT-2016-BLG-2052, for which the lensing-induced brightening of the source star lasted for 2 seasons. We determine the lens mass from the combined measurements of the microlens parallax…
In X-ray binaries, several percent of the compact object luminosity is intercepted by the surface of the normal companion and re-radiated through Compton reflection and the K-fluorescence. This reflected emission follows the variability of…
Binary neutron-star mergers will predominantly produce black-hole remnants of mass $\sim 3-4\,M_{\odot}$, thus populating the putative \emph{low mass gap} between neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes. If these low-mass black holes are…
Given the stellar density near the galactic center, close encounters between compact object binaries and the supermassive black hole are a plausible occurrence. We present results from a numerical study of close to 13 million such…
Over the past decade, microlensing has developed into a powerful tool to study stellar astrophysics, especially stellar atmospheres, stellar masses, and binarity. I review this progress. Stellar atmospheres can be probed whenever the source…