We present the discovery of a Neptune-mass planet OGLE-2007-BLG-368Lb with a planet-star mass ratio of q = 9.5 +- 2.1 x 10{sup -5} via gravitational microlensing. The planetary deviation was detected ...in real-time thanks to the high cadence of the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics survey, real-time light-curve monitoring and intensive follow-up observations. A Bayesian analysis returns the stellar mass and distance at M{sub l} = 0.64{sup +0.21}{sub -0.26} M{sub sun} and D{sub l} = 5.9{sup +0.9}{sub -1.4} kpc, respectively, so the mass and separation of the planet are M{sub p} = 20{sup +7}{sub -8} M{sub +} and a = 3.3{sup +1.4}{sub -0.8} AU, respectively. This discovery adds another cold Neptune-mass planet to the planetary sample discovered by microlensing, which now comprises four cold Neptune/super-Earths, five gas giant planets, and another sub-Saturn mass planet whose nature is unclear. The discovery of these 10 cold exoplanets by the microlensing method implies that the mass ratio function of cold exoplanets scales as dN{sub pl}/dlog q {proportional_to} q {sup -0.7+}-{sup 0.2} with a 95% confidence level upper limit of n < -0.35 (where dN{sub pl}/dlog q {proportional_to} q{sup n} ). As microlensing is most sensitive to planets beyond the snow-line, this implies that Neptune-mass planets are at least three times more common than Jupiters in this region at the 95% confidence level.
Microlensing can provide an important tool to study binaries, especially those composed of faint or dark objects. However, accurate analysis of binary-lens light curves is often hampered by the ...well-known degeneracy between close (s < 1) and wide (s > 1) binaries, which can be very severe due to an intrinsic symmetry in the lens equation. Here, s is the normalized projected binary separation. In this paper, we propose a method that can resolve the close/wide degeneracy using the effect of a lens orbital motion on lensing light curves. The method is based on the fact that the orbital effect tends to be important for close binaries while it is negligible for wide binaries. We demonstrate the usefulness of the method by applying it to an actually observed binary-lens event MOA-2011-BLG-040/OGLE-2011-BLG-0001, which suffers from severe close/wide degeneracy. From this, we are able to uniquely specify that the lens is composed of K- and M-type dwarfs located ~3.5 kpc from the Earth.
Observations of accretion disks around young brown dwarfs (BDs) 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 BDs (2MASS 1207-3932 and 2MASS 0441-2301), these companions have relatively large mass ratios and projected separations, suggesting that they formed in a manner analogous to stellar binaries. We present the discovery of a planetary-mass object orbiting a field BD via gravitational microlensing, OGLE-2012-BLG-0358Lb. The system is a low secondary/primary mass ratio (0.080 + or - 0.001), relatively tightly separated (~0.87 AU) binary composed of a planetary-mass object with 1.9 + or - 0.2 Jupiter masses orbiting a BD with a mass 0.022 M sub(middot in circle). The relatively small mass ratio and separation suggest that the companion may have formed in a protoplanetary disk around the BD host in a manner analogous to planets.
We report the result of the analysis of the light curve of the microlensing event MOA-2009-BLG-016. The light curve is characterized by a short-duration anomaly near the peak and an overall ...asymmetry. We find that the peak anomaly is due to a binary companion to the primary lens and the asymmetry of the light curve is explained by the parallax effect caused by the acceleration of the observer over the course of the event due to the orbital motion of the Earth around the Sun. In addition, we detect evidence for the effect of the finite size of the source near the peak of the event, which allows us to measure the angular Einstein radius of the lens system. The Einstein radius combined with the microlens parallax allows us to determine the total mass of the lens and the distance to the lens. We identify three distinct classes of degenerate solutions for the binary lens parameters, where two are manifestations of the previously identified degeneracies of close/wide binaries and positive/negative impact parameters, while the third class is caused by the symmetric cycloid shape of the caustic. We find that, for the best-fit solution, the estimated mass of the lower-mass component of the binary is (0.04 {+-} 0.01) M{sub sun}, implying a brown-dwarf companion. However, there exists a solution that is worse only by {Delta}{chi}{sup 2} {approx} 3 for which the mass of the secondary is above the hydrogen-burning limit. Unfortunately, resolving these two degenerate solutions will be difficult as the relative lens-source proper motions for both are similar and small ({approx}1 mas yr{sup -1}) and thus the lens will remain blended with the source for the next several decades.
We present an analysis of the gravitational microlensing event OGLE-2013-BLG-0102. The light curve of the event is characterized by a strong short-term anomaly superposed on a smoothly varying ...lensing curve with a moderate magnification A sub(max) ~ 1.5. It is found that the event was produced by a binary lens with a mass ratio between the components of q = 0.13 and the anomaly was caused by the passage of the source trajectory over a caustic located away from the barycenter of the binary. Based on the analysis of the effects on the light curve due to the finite size of the source and the parallactic motion of the Earth, we determine the physical parameters of the lens system. The measured masses of the lens components are M sub(1) = 0.096 + or - 0.013 M sub(middot in circle) and M sub(2) = 0.012 + or - 0.002 M sub(middot in circle), which correspond to near the hydrogen-burning and deuterium-burning mass limits, respectively. The distance to the lens is 3.04 + or - 0.31 kpc and the projected separation between the lens components is 0.80 + or - 0.08 AU.
ABSTRACT We report the discovery of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting an M-dwarf star that gave rise to the microlensing event OGLE-2011-BLG-0265. Such a system is very rare among known planetary ...systems and thus the discovery is important for theoretical studies of planetary formation and evolution. High-cadence temporal coverage of the planetary signal, combined with extended observations throughout the event, allows us to accurately model the observed light curve. However, the final microlensing solution remains degenerate, yielding two possible configurations of the planet and the host star. In the case of the preferred solution, the mass of the planet is , and the planet is orbiting a star with a mass . The second possible configuration (2 away) consists of a planet with and host star with . The system is located in the Galactic disk 3-4 kpc toward the Galactic bulge. In both cases, with an orbit size of 1.5-2.0 AU, the planet is a "cold Jupiter"-located well beyond the "snow line" of the host star. Currently available data make the secure selection of the correct solution difficult, but there are prospects for lifting the degeneracy with additional follow-up observations in the future, when the lens and source star separate.
Abstract
We present the results of completeness simulations for the detection of point sources as well as redshifted elliptical and spiral galaxies in the K′-band images of the Munich Near-Infrared ...Cluster Survey (MUNICS). The main focus of this work is to quantify the selection effects introduced by threshold-based object detection algorithms used in deep imaging surveys. Therefore, we simulate objects obeying the well-known scaling relations between effective radius and central surface brightness, for both de Vaucouleurs and exponential profiles. The results of these simulations, while presented for the MUNICS project, are applicable in a much wider context to deep optical and near-infrared selected samples. We investigate the detection probability as well as the reliability for recovering the true total magnitude with Kron-like (adaptive) aperture photometry. The results are compared with the predictions of the visibility theory of Disney and Phillipps in terms of the detection rate and the lost-light fraction. Additionally, the effects attributable to seeing are explored. The results show a bias against detecting high-redshifted massive elliptical galaxies in comparison to disc galaxies with exponential profiles, and that the measurements of the total magnitudes for intrinsically bright elliptical galaxies are systematically too faint. Disc galaxies, in contrast, show no significant offset in the magnitude measurement of luminous objects. Finally, we present an analytic formula to predict the completeness of point sources using only basic image parameters.
We report the result of the analysis of the light curve of a caustic-crossing binary-lens microlensing event OGLE-2009-BLG-023/MOA-2009-BLG-028. Even though the event was observed solely by survey ...experiments, we could uniquely determine the mass of the lens and distance to it by simultaneously measuring the Einstein radius and lens parallax. From this, we find that the lens system is composed of M-type dwarfs with masses (0.50 ± 0.07) and (0.15 ± 0.02) M⊙ located in the Galactic disc with a distance of ∼1.8 kpc toward the Galactic bulge direction. The event demonstrates that physical lens parameters of binary-lens events can be routinely determined from future high-cadence lensing surveys and thus microlensing can provide a new way to study Galactic binaries.
Although many models have been proposed, the physical mechanisms responsible for the formation of low-mass brown dwarfs (BDs) are poorly understood. The multiplicity properties and minimum mass of ...the BD mass function provide critical empirical diagnostics of these mechanisms. We present the discovery via gravitational microlensing of two very low mass, very tight binary systems. These binaries have directly and precisely measured total system masses of 0.025 M sub(middot in circle) and 0.034 M sub(middot in circle), and projected separations of 0.31 AU and 0.19 AU, making them the lowest-mass and tightest field BD binaries known. The discovery of a population of such binaries indicates that BD binaries can robustly form at least down to masses of ~0.02 M sub(middot in circle). Future microlensing surveys will measure a mass-selected sample of BD binary systems, which can then be directly compared to similar samples of stellar binaries.
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