Gravitational Microlensing: A Tool for Detecting and Characterizing Free‐Floating Planets

  • Han C
  • Chung S
  • Kim D
  • et al.
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Abstract

Various methods have been proposed to search for extrasolar planets. Compared to the other methods, microlensing has unique applicabilities to the detections of Earth-mass and free-floating planets. However, the microlensing method is seriously flawed by the fact that the masses of the detected planets cannot be uniquely determined. Recently, Gould, Gaudi, & Han introduced an observational setup that enables one to resolve the mass degeneracy of the Earth-mass planets. The setup requires a modest adjustment to the orbit of an already proposed Microlensing planet-finder satellite combined with ground-based observations. In this paper, we show that a similar observational setup can also be used for the mass determinations of free-floating planets with masses ranging from ~0.1 M_J to several Jupiter masses. If the proposed observational setup is realized, the future lensing surveys will play important roles in the studies of Earth-mass and free-floating planets, which are the populations of planets that have not been previously probed.

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APA

Han, C., Chung, S., Kim, D., Park, B., Ryu, Y., Kang, S., & Lee, D. W. (2004). Gravitational Microlensing: A Tool for Detecting and Characterizing Free‐Floating Planets. The Astrophysical Journal, 604(1), 372–378. https://doi.org/10.1086/381429

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