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Characterizing a microlensing planet is done by modeling an observed lensing light curve. In this process, it is often confronted that solutions of different lensing parameters result in similar light curves, causing difficulties in uniquely interpreting the lens system, and thus understanding the causes of different types of degeneracy is important. In this work, we show that incomplete coverage of a planetary perturbation can result in degenerate solutions even for events where the planetary signal is detected with a high level of statistical significance. We demonstrate the degeneracy for an actually observed event OGLE-2012-BLG-0455/MOA-2012-BLG-206. The peak of this high-magnification event (Amax ∼ 400) exhibits very strong deviation from a point-lens model with Δχ2 ≳ 4000 for data sets with a total of 6963 measurements. From detailed modeling of the light curve, we find that the deviation can be explained by four distinct solutions, i.e., two very different sets of solutions, each with a twofold degeneracy. While the twofold (so-called close/wide) degeneracy is well understood, the degeneracy between the radically different solutions is not previously known. The model light curves of this degeneracy differ substantially in the parts that were not covered by observation, indicating that the degeneracy is caused by the incomplete coverage of the perturbation. It is expected that the frequency of the degeneracy introduced in this work will be greatly reduced with the improvement of the current lensing survey and follow-up experiments and the advent of new surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the astrophysical importance of binary star systems, detections are limited to those located in small ranges of separations, distances, and masses and thus it is necessary to use a variety of observational techniques for a complete view of stellar multiplicity across a broad range of physical parameters. In this paper, we report the detections and measurements of two binaries discovered from observations of microlensing events MOA-2011-BLG-090 and OGLE-2011-BLG-0417. Determinations of the binary masses are possible by simultaneously measuring the Einstein radius and the lens parallax. The measured masses of the binary components are 0.43 M☼ and 0.39 M☼ for MOA-2011-BLG-090 and 0.57 M☼ and 0.17 M☼ for OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 and thus both lens components of MOA-2011-BLG-090 and one component of OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 are M dwarfs, demonstrating the usefulness of microlensing in detecting binaries composed of low-mass components. From modeling of the light curves considering full Keplerian motion of the lens, we also measure the orbital parameters of the binaries. The blended light of OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 comes very likely from the lens itself, making it possible to check the microlensing orbital solution by follow-up radial-velocity observation. For both events, the caustic-crossing parts of the light curves, which are critical for determining the physical lens parameters, were resolved by high-cadence survey observations and thus it is expected that the number of microlensing binaries with measured physical parameters will increase in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the 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 Amax ~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. From the analysis of the effects on the light curve due to the finite size of the source and the parallactic motion of the Earth, the physical parameters of the lens system are determined. The measured masses of the lens components are M1 = 0.096 ± 0.013 M⊙ and M2 = 0.012±0.002 M⊙, which correspond to near the hydrogen-burning and deuterium-burning mass limits, respectively. The distance to the lens is 3.04±0.31 kpc and the projected separation between the lens components is 0.80 ± 0.08 AU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a detailed analysis of survey and follow-up observations of microlensing event OGLE-2012-BLG-0406 based on data obtained from 10 different observatories. Intensive coverage of the light curve, especially the perturbation part, allowed us to accurately measure the parallax effect and lens orbital motion. Combining our measurement of the lens parallax with the angular Einstein radius determined from finite-source effects, we estimate the physical parameters of the lens system. We find that the event was caused by a 2.73 ± 0.43 MJ planet orbiting a 0.44 ± 0.07 M☼ early M-type star. The distance to the lens is 4.97 ± 0.29 kpc and the projected separation between the host star and its planet at the time of the event is 3.45 ± 0.26 AU. We find that the additional coverage provided by follow-up observations, especially during the planetary perturbation, leads to a more accurate determination of the physical parameters of the lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A planetary microlensing signal is generally characterized by a short-term perturbation to the standard single lensing light curve. A subset of binary-source events can produce perturbations that mimic planetary signals, thereby introducing an ambiguity between the planetary and binary-source interpretations. In this paper, we present the analysis of the microlensing event MOA-2012-BLG-486, for which the light curve exhibits a short-lived perturbation. Routine modeling not considering data taken in different passbands yields a best-fit planetary model that is slightly preferred over the best-fit binary-source model. However, when allowed for a change in the color during the perturbation, we find that the binary-source model yields a significantly better fit and thus the degeneracy is clearly resolved. This event not only signifies the importance of considering various interpretations of short-term anomalies, but also demonstrates the importance of multi-band data for checking the possibility of false-positive planetary signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 theory of planet formation. In this paper, we report the discovery of a giant planet detected from the analysis of the light curve of a high-magnification microlensing event MOA 2010-BLG-477. The measured planet-star mass ratio is q = (2.181 ± 0.004) × 10–3 and the projected separation is s = 1.1228 ± 0.0006 in units of the Einstein radius. The angular Einstein radius is unusually large θE = 1.38 ± 0.11 mas. Combining this measurement with constraints on the “microlens parallax” and the lens flux, we can only limit the host mass to the range 0.13 < M/M☼ < 1.0. In this particular case, the strong degeneracy between microlensing parallax and planet orbital motion prevents us from measuring more accurate host and planet masses. However, we find that adding Bayesian priors from two effects (Galactic model and Keplerian orbit) each independently favors the upper end of this mass range, yielding star and planet masses of M* = 0.67+0.33– 0.13M☼ and mp = 1.5+0.8– 0.3MJUP at a distance of D = 2.3 ± 0.6 kpc, and with a semi-major axis of a = 2+3– 1 AU. Finally, we show that the lens mass can be determined from future high-resolution near-IR adaptive optics observations independently from two effects, photometric and astrometric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We combine Spitzer and ground-based observations to measure the microlens parallax vector , and thus the mass and distance of OGLE-2014-BLG-0124L, making it the first microlensing planetary system with a space-based parallax measurement. The planet and star have masses of m ∼ 0.5 Mjup and M ∼ 0.7 M☼ and are separated by a⊥ ∼ 3.1 AU in projection. The main source of uncertainty in all of these numbers (approximately 30%, 30%, and 20%) is the relatively poor measurement of the Einstein radius θE, rather than uncertainty in πE, which is measured with 2.5% precision. This compares to 22% based on OGLE data alone, implying that the Spitzer data provide not only a substantial improvement in the precision of the πE measurement, but also the first independent test of a ground-based measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass of the lenses giving rise to Galactic microlensing events can be constrained by measuring the relative lens-source proper motion and lens flux. The flux of the lens can be separated from that of the source, companions to the source, and unrelated nearby stars with high-resolution images taken when the lens and source are spatially resolved. For typical ground-based adaptive optics (AO) or space-based observations, this requires either inordinately long time baselines or high relative proper motions. We provide a list of microlensing events toward the Galactic bulge with high relative lens-source proper motion that are therefore good candidates for constraining the lens mass with future high-resolution imaging. We investigate all events from 2004 to 2013 that display detectable finite-source effects, a feature that allows us to measure the proper motion. In total, we present 20 events with μ ≳ 8 mas yr–1. Of these, 14 were culled from previous analyses while 6 are new, including OGLE-2004-BLG-368, MOA-2005-BLG-36, OGLE-2012-BLG-0211, OGLE-2012-BLG-0456, MOA-2012-BLG-532, and MOA-2013-BLG-029. In ≲12 yr from the time of each event the lens and source of each event will be sufficiently separated for ground-based telescopes with AO systems or space telescopes to resolve each component and further characterize the lens system. Furthermore, for the most recent events, comparison of the lens flux estimates from images taken immediately to those estimated from images taken when the lens and source are resolved can be used to empirically check the robustness of the single-epoch method currently being used to estimate lens masses for many events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the analysis of the light curves of nine high-magnification single-lens gravitational microlensing events with lenses passing over source stars, including OGLE-2004-BLG-254, MOA-2007-BLG-176, MOA-2007-BLG-233/OGLE-2007-BLG-302, MOA-2009-BLG-174, MOA-2010-BLG-436, MOA-2011-BLG-093, MOA-2011-BLG-274, OGLE-2011-BLG-0990/MOA-2011-BLG-300, and OGLE-2011-BLG-1101/MOA-2011-BLG-325. For all of the events, we measure the linear limb-darkening coefficients of the surface brightness profile of source stars by measuring the deviation of the light curves near the peak affected by the finite-source effect. For seven events, we measure the Einstein radii and the lens-source relative proper motions. Among them, five events are found to have Einstein radii of less than 0.2 mas, making the lenses very low mass star or brown dwarf candidates. For MOA-2011-BLG-274, especially, the small Einstein radius of θE ∼ 0.08 mas combined with the short timescale of tE ∼ 2.7 days suggests the possibility that the lens is a free-floating planet. For MOA-2009-BLG-174, we measure the lens parallax and thus uniquely determine the physical parameters of the lens. We also find that the measured lens mass of ∼0.84 M☼ is consistent with that of a star blended with the source, suggesting that the blend is likely to be the lens. Although we did not find planetary signals for any of the events, we provide exclusion diagrams showing the confidence levels excluding the existence of a planet as a function of the separation and mass ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]