English

MaB$\mu$lS-2: high-precision microlensing modelling for the large-scale survey era

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2020-09-30 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

Galactic microlensing datasets now comprise in excess of 10410^4 events, and with the advent of next generation microlensing surveys that may be undertaken with facilities such as the Rubin Observatory (formerly LSST) and Roman Space Telescope (formerly WFIRST), this number will increase significantly. So too will the fraction of events with measurable higher order information such as finite source effects and lens-source relative proper motion. Analysing such data requires a more sophisticated Galactic microlens modeling approach. We present a new second-generation Manchester-Besan\c{c}on Microlensing Simulator (MaBμ\mulS-2), which uses a version of the Besan\c{c}on population synthesis Galactic model that provides good agreement with stellar kinematics observed by HST towards the bulge. MaBμ\mulS-2 provides high-fidelity signal-to-noise limited maps of the microlensing optical depth, rate and average timescale towards a 400 sq. degree region of the Galactic bulge in several optical to near-infrared pass-bands. The maps take full account of the unresolved stellar background as well as limb-darkened source profiles. Comparing MaBμ\mulS-2 to the efficiency-corrected OGLE-IV 8,000 event sample shows a much improved agreement over the previous version of MaBμ\mulS, and succeeds in matching even small-scale structural features in the OGLE-IV event rate map. However, there remains evidence for a small under-prediction in the event rate per source and over-prediction in timescale. MaBμ\mulS-2 is available online (<www.mabuls.net>) to provide on-the-fly maps for user supplied cuts in survey magnitude, event timescale and relative proper motion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.14668,
  title  = {MaB$\mu$lS-2: high-precision microlensing modelling for the large-scale survey era},
  author = {David Specht and Eamonn Kerins and Supachai Awiphan and Annie C. Robin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.14668},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

24 pages, 21 figures, Journal: MNRAS, for associated online tool, visit <www.mabuls.net>

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