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Abstract To exhume the buried signatures of free-floating planets (FFPs) with small angular Einstein radiusθE, we build a new full-frame difference image pipeline for the Korean Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) survey based on the newly optimized pySIS package. We introduce the detailed processes of the new pipeline, including frame registration, difference image analysis, and light curve extraction. To test this pipeline, we extract one-year light curves for 483,068 stars withI ≲ 17 and conduct a model-independent search for microlensing events. The search finds 36 microlensing events, including five new events and six events discovered by other collaborations but missed by previous KMTNet searches. We find that the light curves from the new pipeline are precise enough to be sensitive to FFPs withθE ∼ 1μas. Using the new pipeline, a complete FFP search on the eight-year KMTNet images can be finished within six months and then yield the FFP mass function. The new pipeline can be used for a new KMTNet AlertFinder system, with significantly reduced false positives.
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Euclid-Roman joint microlensing survey: Early mass measurement, free floating planets, and exomoons
As the Kepler mission has done for hot exoplanets, the ESA Euclid and NASA Roman missions have the potential to create a breakthrough in our understanding of the demographics of cool exoplanets, including unbound, or free-floating, planets (FFPs). Roman will dedicate part of its core survey program to the detection of cool exoplanets via microlensing, while Euclid may undertake a microlensing program as an ancillary science goal. In this study, we demonstrate the complementarity of the two missions and propose two joint surveys to better constrain the mass and distance of microlensing events. We first demonstrate that an early brief Euclid survey (~7 h) of the Roman microlensing fields will allow the measurement of at least 30% of the events’ relative proper motions µ rel and 42% of the lens magnitudes. This survey would place strong constraints on the mass and distance on thousands of microlensing events observed by Roman just after the first year of observation. Then, we study the potential of simultaneous observations by Roman and Euclid to enable the measurement of the microlensing parallax for the shortest microlensing events and, ultimately, obtain a direct measurement of the masses, distances, and transverse motions of FFPs. Using detailed simulations of the joint detection yield we show that within one year Roman-Euclid observations will be at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than current ground-based measurements. The recent tentative detection of an excess of short-duration events by the OGLE survey is consistent with a scenario of up to ten Earth-mass FFPs per Galactic star. For such a scenario a joint Roman-Euclid campaign should detect around 130 FFP events within a year, including 110 with measured parallax that strongly constrain the FFP mass, and around 30 FFP events with direct mass and distance measurements. The ability of the joint survey to completely break the microlens mass-distance-velocity degeneracy for a significant subset of events provides a unique opportunity to verify unambiguously the FFP hypothesis or else place abundance limits for FFPs between Earth and Jupiter masses that are up to two orders of magnitude stronger than provided by ground-based surveys. Finally, we study the capabilities of the joint survey to enhance the detection and characterization of exomoons, and find that it could lead to the detection of the first exomoon.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1852356
- PAR ID:
- 10444221
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Volume:
- 664
- ISSN:
- 0004-6361
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- A136
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202140351
