Sharif Digital Repository

We report the result of the analysis of a dramatic repeating gravitational microlensing event OGLE-2009-BLG-092/MOA-2009-BLG-137, for which the light curve is characterized by two distinct peaks with perturbations near both peaks. We find that the event is produced by the passage of the source trajectory over the central perturbation regions associated with the individual components of a wide-separation binary. The event is special in the sense that the second perturbation, occurring ∼100 days after the first, was predicted by the real-time analysis conducted after the first peak, demonstrating that real-time modeling can be routinely done for binary and planetary events.With the data... 

Within less than 15 years, the count of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun has risen from none to more than 400 with detections arising from four successfully applied techniques: Doppler-wobbles, planetary transits, gravitational microlensing, and direct imaging. While the hunt for twin Earths is on, a statistically well-defined sample of the population of planets in all their variety is required for probing models of planet formation and orbital evolution so that the origin of planets that harbour life, like and including ours, can be understood. Given the different characteristics of the detection techniques, a complete picture can only arise from a combination of their... 

The detection of signals from a possible extrasolar technological civilization is one of the most challenging efforts of science. In this work, we propose using natural telescopes made of single or binary gravitational lensing systems to magnify leakage of electromagnetic signals from a remote planet that harbors Extraterrestrial Intelligent (ETI) technology. Currently, gravitational microlensing surveys are monitoring a large area of the Galactic bulge to search for microlensing events, finding more than 2000 events per year. These lenses are capable of playing the role of natural telescopes, and, in some instances, they can magnify radio band signals from planets orbiting around the source... 

Gravitational microlensing has been used as a powerful tool for astrophysical studies and exoplanet detections. In the gravitational microlensing, we have two images with negative and positive parities. The negative-parity image is a fainter image and is produced at a closer angular separation with respect to the lens star. In the case of a red-giant lens star and large impact parameter of lensing, this image can be eclipsed by the lens star. The result would be dimming the flux receiving from the combination of the source and the lens stars and the light curve resembles to an eclipsing binary system. In this work, we introduce this phenomenon and propose an observational procedure for... 

We report the detection of a cold Neptune mplanet = 21 ± 2 M⊕ orbiting a 0.38 Mo M dwarf lying 2.5-3.3 kpc toward the Galactic center as part of a campaign combining ground-based and Spitzer observations to measure the Galactic distribution of planets. This is the first time that the complex real-time protocols described by Yee et al., which aim to maximize planet sensitivity while maintaining sample integrity, have been carried out in practice. Multiple survey and follow up teams successfully combined their efforts within the framework of these protocols to detect this planet. This is the second planet in the Spitzer Galactic distribution sample. Both are in the near to mid-disk and are... 

In this work, we study the interaction of the electromagnetic wave (EW) from a distant quasar with the gravitational wave (GW) sourced by the binary stars.While in the regime of geometric optics the light bending due to this interaction is negligible, we show that the phase shifting on the wavefront of an EW can produce the diffraction pattern on the observer plane. The diffraction of the light (with the wavelength of λe) by the gravitational wave playing the role of gravitational grating (with the wavelength of λg) has the diffraction angle of Δβ ~ λe/λg. The relative motion of the observer, the source of gravitational wave, and the quasar results in a relative motion of the observer... 

We report the discovery of OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb, which is likely to be the first Spitzer microlensing planet in the Galactic bulge/bar, an assignation that can be confirmed by two epochs of high-resolution imaging of the combined source-lens baseline object. The planet's mass, Mp = 13.4 ± 0.9 MJ, places it right at the deuterium-burning limit, i.e., the conventional boundary between "planets" and "brown dwarfs." Its existence raises the question of whether such objects are really "planets" (formed within the disks of their hosts) or "failed stars" (low-mass objects formed by gas fragmentation). This question may ultimately be addressed by comparing disk and bulge/bar planets, which is a goal... 

With several detections, the technique of gravitational microlensing has proven useful for studying planets that orbit stars at Galactic distances, and it can even be applied to detect planets in neighbouring galaxies. So far, planet detections by microlensing have been considered to result from a change in the bending of light and the resulting magnification caused by a planet around the foreground lens star. However, in complete analogy to the annual parallax effect caused by the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the motion of the source star around the common barycentre with an orbiting planet can also lead to observable deviations in microlensing light curves that can provide... 

We analyze the planetary microlensing event MOA-2010-BLG-328. The best fit yields host and planetary masses of Mh = 0.11 ± 0.01 M Ȯ and Mp = 9.2 ± 2.2 M ⊕, corresponding to a very late M dwarf and sub-Neptune-mass planet, respectively. The system lies at D L = 0.81 ± 0.10 kpc with projected separation r ⊥ = 0.92 ± 0.16 AU. Because of the host's a priori unlikely close distance, as well as the unusual nature of the system, we consider the possibility that the microlens parallax signal, which determines the host mass and distance, is actually due to xallarap (source orbital motion) that is being misinterpreted as parallax. We show a result that favors the parallax solution, even given its... 

Although many models have been proposed, the physical mechanisms responsible for the formation of low-mass brown dwarfs (BDs) are poorly understood. The multiplicity properties and minimum mass of the BD mass function provide critical empirical diagnostics of these mechanisms. We present the discovery via gravitational microlensing of two very low mass, very tight binary systems. These binaries have directly and precisely measured total system masses of 0.025 M· and 0.034 M·, and projected separations of 0.31 AU and 0.19 AU, making them the lowest-mass and tightest field BD binaries known. The discovery of a population of such binaries indicates that BD binaries can robustly form at least... 

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... 

The microlensing event OGLE-2008-BLG-510 is characterized by an evident asymmetric shape of the peak, promptly detected by the Automated Robotic Terrestrial Exoplanet Microlensing Search (ARTEMiS) system in real time. The skewness of the light curve appears to be compatible both with binary-lens and binary-source models, including the possibility that the lens system consists of an M dwarf orbited by a brown dwarf. The detection of this microlensing anomaly and our analysis demonstrate that: (1) automated real-time detection of weak microlensing anomalies with immediate feedback is feasible, efficient and sensitive, (2) rather common weak features intrinsically come with ambiguities that are... 

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... 

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... 

Microlensing can provide a useful tool to probe binary distributions down to low-mass limits of binary companions. In this paper, we analyze the light curves of eight binary-lensing events detected through the channel of high-magnification events during the seasons from 2007 to 2010. The perturbations, which are confined near the peak of the light curves, can be easily distinguished from the central perturbations caused by planets. However, the degeneracy between close and wide binary solutions cannot be resolved with a 3σ confidence level for three events, implying that the degeneracy would be an important obstacle in studying binary distributions. The dependence of the degeneracy on the... 

High-magnification microlensing events provide an important channel to detect planets. Perturbations near the peak of a high-magnification event can be produced either by a planet or a binary companion. It is known that central perturbations induced by both types of companions can be generally distinguished due to the essentially different magnification pattern around caustics. In this paper, we present a case of central perturbations for which it is difficult to distinguish the planetary and binary interpretations. The peak of a lensing light curve affected by this perturbation appears to be blunt and flat. For a planetary case, this perturbation occurs when the source trajectory passes the... 

We report the gravitational microlensing discovery of a sub-Saturn mass planet, MOA-2009-BLG-319Lb, orbiting a K-or M-dwarf star in the inner Galactic disk or Galactic bulge. The high-cadence observations of the MOA-II survey discovered this microlensing event and enabled its identification as a high-magnification event approximately 24 hr prior to peak magnification. As a result, the planetary signal at the peak of this light curve was observed by 20 different telescopes, which is the largest number of telescopes to contribute to a planetary discovery to date. The microlensing model for this event indicates a planet-star mass ratio of q = (3.95 ± 0.02) × 10-4 and a separation of d = 0.97537... 

We report the discovery of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting an M-dwarf star that gave rise to the microlensing event OGLE-2011-BLG-0265. Such a system is very rare among known planetary systems and thus the discovery is important for theoretical studies of planetary formation and evolution. High-cadence temporal coverage of the planetary signal, combined with extended observations throughout the event, allows us to accurately model the observed light curve. However, the final microlensing solution remains degenerate, yielding two possible configurations of the planet and the host star. In the case of the preferred solution, the mass of the planet is Mp = 0.9 ± 0.3 MJ, and the planet is... 

We present the first measurement of the planet frequency beyond the "snow line," for the planet-to-star mass-ratio interval-4.5 < logq <-2, corresponding to the range of ice giants to gas giants. We find d 2Np1/dlog q d log s= (0.36 ± 0.15) dex dlog q d logs at the mean mass ratio q = 5 × 10-4 with no discernible deviation from a flat (öpik's law) distribution in logprojected separation s. The determination is based on a sample of six planets detected from intensive follow-up observations of high-magnification (A > 200) microlensing events during 2005-2008. The sampled host stars have a typical mass Mhost ∼ 0.5 M⊙, and detection is sensitive to planets over a range of planet-star-projected... 

In recent years a large number of hot Jupiters orbiting in a very close orbit around the parent stars have been explored with the transit and Doppler effect methods. Here in this paper we study the gravitational microlensing effect of a binary lens on a parent star with a hot Jupiter revolving around it. Caustic crossing of the planet makes enhancements on the light curve of the parent star in which the signature of the planet can be detected by high-precision photometric observations. We use the inverse ray shooting method with tree code algorithm to generate the combined light curve of the parent star and the planet. In order to investigate the probability of observing the planet signal,...