M. Nagaya

Unbound or distant planetary mass population detected by gravitational microlensing

Since 1995, more than 500 exoplanets have been detected using different techniques, of which 12 were detected with gravitational microlensing. Most of these are gravitationally bound to their host stars. There is some evidence of free-floating planetary-mass objects in young star-forming regions, but these objects are limited to massive objects of 3 to 15 Jupiter masses with large uncertainties in photometric mass estimates and their abundance. Here, we report the discovery of a population of unbound or distant Jupiter-mass objects, which are almost twice () as common as main-sequence stars, based on two years of gravitational microlensing survey observations towards the Galactic Bulge. These planetary-mass objects have no host stars that can be detected within about ten astronomical units by gravitational microlensing. However, a comparison with constraints from direct imaging suggests that most of these planetary-mass objects are not bound to any host star. An abrupt change in the mass function at about one Jupiter mass favours the idea that their formation process is different from that of stars and brown dwarfs. They may have formed in proto-planetary disks and subsequently scattered into unbound or very distant orbits.

A Low-Mass Planet with a Possible Sub-Stellar-Mass Host in Microlensing Event MOA-2007-BLG-192

We report the detection of an extrasolar planet of mass ratio q~2×10-4 in microlensing event MOA-2007-BLG-192. The best-fit microlensing model shows both the microlensing parallax and finite source effects, and these can be combined to obtain the lens masses of M=0.060+0.028-0.021 Msolar for the primary and m=3.3+4.9-1.6 M? for the planet. However, the observational coverage of the planetary deviation is sparse and incomplete, and the radius of the source was estimated without the benefit of a source star color measurement. As a result, the 2 ? limits on the mass ratio and finite source measurements are weak. Nevertheless, the microlensing parallax signal clearly favors a substellar mass planetary host, and the measurement of finite source effects in the light curve supports this conclusion. Adaptive optics images taken with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) NACO instrument are consistent with a lens star that is either a brown dwarf or a star at the bottom of the main sequence. Follow-up VLT and/or Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations will either confirm that the primary is a brown dwarf or detect the low-mass lens star and enable a precise determination of its mass. In either case, the lens star, MOA-2007-BLG-192L, is the lowest mass primary known to have a companion with a planetary mass ratio, and the planet, MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, is probably the lowest mass exoplanet found to date, aside from the lowest mass pulsar planet.

MICROLENSING EVENT MOA-2007-BLG-400: EXHUMING THE BURIED SIGNATURE OF A COOL, JOVIAN-MASS PLANET

We report the detection of the cool, Jovian-mass planet MOA-2007-BLG-400Lb. The planet was detected in a high-magnification microlensing event (with peak magnification A max = 628) in which the primary lens transited the source, resulting in a dramatic smoothing of the peak of the event. The angular extent of the region of perturbation due to the planet is significantly smaller than the angular size of the source, and as a result the planetary signature is also smoothed out by the finite source size. Thus, the deviation from a single-lens fit is broad and relatively weak (approximately few percent). Nevertheless, we demonstrate that the planetary nature of the deviation can be unambiguously ascertained from the gross features of the residuals, and detailed analysis yields a fairly precise planet/star mass ratio of , in accord with the large significance () of the detection. The planet/star projected separation is subject to a strong close/wide degeneracy, leading to two indistinguishable solutions that differ in separation by a factor of ~8.5. Upper limits on flux from the lens constrain its mass to be M < 0.75 M ? (assuming that it is a main-sequence star). A Bayesian analysis that includes all available observational constraints indicates a primary in the Galactic bulge with a mass of ~0.2-0.5 M ? and thus a planet mass of ~0.5-1.3 M Jup. The separation and equilibrium temperature are ~5.3-9.7 AU (~0.6-1.1 AU) and ~34 K (~103 K) for the wide (close) solution. If the primary is a main-sequence star, follow-up observations would enable the detection of its light and so a measurement of its mass and distance.

The Extreme Microlensing Event OGLE-2007-BLG-224: Terrestrial Parallax Observation of a Thick-Disk Brown Dwarf

Parallax is the most fundamental technique for measuring distances to astronomical objects. Although terrestrial parallax was pioneered over 2000 years ago by Hipparchus (ca. 140 B.C.E.) to measure the distance to the Moon, the baseline of the Earth is so small that terrestrial parallax can generally only be applied to objects in the Solar System. However, there exists a class of extreme gravitational microlensing events in which the effects of terrestrial parallax can be readily detected and so permit the measurement of the distance, mass, and transverse velocity of the lens. Here we report observations of the first such extreme microlensing event OGLE-2007-BLG-224, from which we infer that the lens is a brown dwarf of mass M = 0.056 ± 0.004 M ☉, with a distance of 525 ± 40 pc and a transverse velocity of 113 ± 21 km s–1. The velocity places the lens in the thick disk, making this the lowest-mass thick-disk brown dwarf detected so far. Follow-up observations may allow one to observe the light from the brown dwarf itself, thus serving as an important constraint for evolutionary models of these objects and potentially opening a new window on substellar objects. The low a priori probability of detecting a thick-disk brown dwarf in this event, when combined with additional evidence from other observations, suggests that old substellar objects may be more common than previously assumed.

EXTREME MAGNIFICATION MICROLENSING EVENT OGLE-2008-BLG-279: STRONG LIMITS ON PLANETARY COMPANIONS TO THE LENS STAR

We analyze the extreme high-magnification microlensing event OGLE-2008-BLG-279, which peaked at a maximum magnification of A ~ 1600 on 2008 May 30. The peak of this event exhibits both finite-source effects and terrestrial parallax, from which we determine the mass of the lens, Ml = 0.64 ? 0.10 M ?, and its distance, Dl = 4.0 ? 0.6 kpc. We rule out Jupiter-mass planetary companions to the lens star for projected separations in the range 0.5-20 AU. More generally, we find that this event was sensitive to planets with masses as small as with projected separations near the Einstein ring (~3 AU).

Mass measurement of a single unseen star and planetary detection efficiency for OGLE 2007-BLG-050

We analyze OGLE-2007-BLG-050, a high magnification microlensing event (A ~ 432) whose peak occurred on 2 May, 2007, with pronounced finite-source and parallax effects. We compute planet detection efficiencies for this event in order to determine its sensitivity to the presence of planets around the lens star. Both finite-source and parallax effects permit a measurement of the angular Einstein radius \theta_E = 0.48 +/- 0.01 mas and the parallax \pi_E = 0.12 +/- 0.03, leading to an estimate of the lens mass M = 0.50 +/- 0.14 M_Sun and its distance to the observer D_L = 5.5 +/- 0.4 kpc. This is only the second determination of a reasonably precise (<30%) mass estimate for an isolated unseen object, using any method. This allows us to calculate the planetary detection efficiency in physical units (r_\perp, m_p), where r_\perp is the projected planet-star separation and m_p is the planet mass. When computing planet detection efficiency, we did not find any planetary signature and our detection efficiency results reveal significant sensitivity to Neptune-mass planets, and to a lesser extent Earth-mass planets in some configurations. Indeed, Jupiter and Neptune-mass planets are excluded with a high confidence for a large projected separation range between the planet and the lens star, respectively [0.6 - 10] and [1.4 - 4] AU, and Earth-mass planets are excluded with a 10% confidence in the lensing zone, i.e. [1.8 - 3.1] AU.

INTERPRETATION OF STRONG SHORT-TERM CENTRAL PERTURBATIONS IN THE LIGHT CURVES OF MODERATE-MAGNIFICATION MICROLENSING EVENTS

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 perturbations can also be produced by binary companions and thus it is important to distinguish planetary signals from those induced by binary companions. In this paper, we analyze the light curves of microlensing events OGLE-2007-BLG-137/MOA-2007-BLG-091, OGLE-2007-BLG-355/MOA-2007-BLG-278, and MOA-2007-BLG-199/OGLE-2007-BLG-419, for all of which exhibit short-term perturbations near the peaks of the light curves. From detailed modeling of the light curves, we find that the perturbations of the events are caused by binary companions rather than planets. From a close examination of the light curves combined with the underlying physical geometry of the lens system obtained from modeling, we find that the short timescale caustic-crossing feature occurring at a low or a moderate base magnification with an additional secondary perturbation is a typical feature of binary-lens events and thus can be used for the discrimination between the binary and planetary interpretations.