A Neptune-mass Free-floating Planet Candidate Discovered by Microlensing Surveys

Abstract

Current microlensing surveys are sensitive to free-floating planets down to Earth-mass objects. All published microlensing events attributed to unbound planets were identified based on their short timescale (below two days), but lacked an angular Einstein radius measurement (and hence lacked a significant constraint on the lens mass). Here, we present the discovery of a Neptune-mass free-floating planet candidate in the ultrashort ( t E = 0.320 ± 0.003 days) microlensing event OGLE-2016-BLG-1540. The event exhibited strong finite-source effects, which allowed us to measure its angular Einstein radius of θ E  = 9.2 ± 0.5 μ as. There remains, however, a degeneracy between the lens mass and distance. The combination of the source proper motion and source-lens relative proper motion measurements favors a Neptune-mass lens located in the Galactic disk. However, we cannot rule out that the lens is a Saturn-mass object belonging to the bulge population. We exclude stellar companions up to ∼15 au.