Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

In this paper, we review the astrophysical application of gravitational microlensing. After introducing the history of gravitational lensing, we present the key equations and concept of microlensing. The most frequent microlensing events are single-lens events and historically it has been used for searching dark matter in the form of compact astrophysical halo objects in the Galactic halo. We discuss about the degeneracy problem in the parameters of lens and perturbation effects that can partially break the degeneracy between the lens parameters. The rest of paper is about the astrophysical applications of microlensing. One of the important applications is in the stellar physics by probing... 

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,... 

We present a combined analysis of the observations of the gravitational microlensing event OGLE-2015-BLG-0479 taken both from the ground and by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The light curves seen from the ground and from space exhibit a time offset of ∼13 days between the caustic spikes, indicating that the relative lens-source positions seen from the two places are displaced by parallax effects. From modeling the light curves, we measure the space-based microlens parallax. Combined with the angular Einstein radius measured by analyzing the caustic crossings, we determine the mass and distance of the lens. We find that the lens is a binary composed of two G-type stars with masses of ∼1.0 M⊙... 

In this paper we present a new exact solution for scalar field with cosmological constant in cylindrical symmetry Associated cosmological models including a model that describes a cyclic universe are discussed  

We report the discovery of a cold Super-Earth planet (mp = 4.4 ± 0.5 M) orbiting a lowmass (M = 0.23 ± 0.03 M) M dwarf at projected separation a = 1.18 ± 0.10 a.u., i.e., about 1.9 times the distance the snow line. The system is quite nearby for a microlensing planet, DL = 0.86 ± 0.09 kpc. Indeed, it was the large lens-source relative parallax πrel = 1.0 mas (combined with the low mass M) that gave rise to the large, and thus well-measured, "microlens parallax πE ∞ (πrel/M)1/2 that enabled these precise measurements. OGLE-2017-BLG-1434Lb is the eighth microlensing planet with planet-host mass ratio q < 1×10-4. We apply a new planet-detection sensitivity method, which is a variant of "V/Vmax,... 

Mass measurements of gravitational microlenses require one to determine the microlens parallax π E, but precise π E measurement, in many cases, is hampered due to the subtlety of the microlens-parallax signal combined with the difficulty of distinguishing the signal from those induced by other higher-order effects. In this work, we present the analysis of the binary-lens event OGLE-2017-BLG-0329, for which π E is measured with a dramatically improved precision using additional data from space-based Spitzer observations. We find that while the parallax model based on the ground-based data cannot be distinguished from a zero-π E model at the 2σ level, the addition of the Spitzer data enables... 

The dynamics of the Magellanic Stream (MS) as a series of clouds extending from the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) to the south Galactic pole is affected by the distribution and the amount of matter in the Milky Way. We calculate the gravitational effect of the Galactic disk on the MS in the framework of modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) and compare with observations of the Stream's radial velocity. We consider the tidal force of the Galaxy, which strips material from the MCs to form the MS, and, using a no-halo model of the Galaxy, we ignore the effect of the drag of the Galactic halo on the MS. We also compare the MONDian dynamics with that in logarithmic and power-law dark halo models and show... 

Brown dwarfs are important objects because they may provide a missing link between stars and planets, two populations that have dramatically different formation histories. In this paper, we present the candidate binaries with brown dwarf companions that are found by analyzing binary microlensing events discovered during the 2004-2011 observation seasons. Based on the low mass ratio criterion of q < 0.2, we found seven candidate events: OGLE-2004-BLG-035, OGLE-2004-BLG-039, OGLE-2007-BLG-006, OGLE-2007-BLG-399/MOA-2007-BLG-334, MOA-2011-BLG-104/OGLE-2011-BLG-0172, MOA-2011-BLG-149, and MOA-201-BLG-278/OGLE- 2011-BLG-012N. Among them, we are able to confirm that the companions of the lenses of... 

Gravitational microlensing can be used as a unique astrophysical tool to study the atmospheres of stars thousands of parsec away from us. This capability results from the bending of light rays in the gravitational field of a lens that can magnify the light of a background source star during the lensing. Moreover, one of the consequences of this light bending is that the circular symmetry of the source is broken because distorted images are produced at either side of the lens position. This property makes it possible to observe polarization, and also the light centroid shift of images. Assigning vectors for these two parameters, they are perpendicular to each other in simple and binary... 

For all exoplanet candidates, the reliability of a claimed detection needs to be assessed through a careful study of systematic errors in the data to minimize the false positives rate. We present a method to investigate such systematics in microlensing data sets using the microlensing event OGLE-2013-BLG-0446 as a case study. The event was observed from multiple sites around the world and its high magnification (Amax ∼ 3000) allowed us to investigate the effects of terrestrial and annual parallax. Real-time modeling of the event while it was still ongoing suggested the presence of an extremely low-mass companion (∼3M) to the lensing star, leading to substantial follow-up coverage of the... 

We study the benefits of polarimetry observations of microlensing events to detect and characterize circumstellar discs around the microlensed stars located at the Galactic bulge. These discs which are unresolvable from their host stars make a net polarization effect due to their projected elliptical shapes. Gravitational microlensing can magnify these signals and make them be resolved. The main aim of this work is to determine what extra information about these discs can be extracted from polarimetry observations of microlensing events in addition to those given by photometry ones. Hot discs which are closer to their host stars are more likely to be detected by microlensing, owing to more... 

We report the discovery of a planet - OGLE-2014-BLG-0676Lb- via gravitational microlensing. Observations for the lensing event were made by the following groups: Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics; Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment; Wise Observatory; RoboNET/Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope; Microlensing Network for the Detection of Small Terrestrial Exoplanets; and μ-FUN. All analyses of the light-curve data favour a lens system comprising a planetary mass orbiting a host star. The most-favoured binary lens model has a mass ratio between the two lens masses of (4.78 ± 0.13) × 10-3. Subject to some important assumptions, a Bayesian probability density analysis suggests... 

We investigate the possibility of exoplanet detection orbiting source stars in microlensing events through WFIRST observations. We perform a Monte Carlo simulation on the detection rate of exoplanets via microlensing, assuming that each source star has at least one exoplanet. The exoplanet can reflect part of the light from the parent star or emit internal thermal radiation. In this new detection channel, we use microlensing as an amplifier to magnify the reflection light from the planet. In the literature, this mode of detecting exoplanets has been investigated much less than the usual mode in which the exoplanets are considered as one companion in binary-lens events. Assuming 72 d of... 

The finite-size effect in gravitational microlensing provides a possibility to measure the limb darkening of distant stars. We use the Finite Element Method (FEM) as an inversion tool for discretization and inversion of the magnification-limb darkening integral equation. This method makes no explicit assumption about the shape of the brightness profile more than the flatness of the profile near the centre of the stellar disc. From the simulation, we investigate the accuracy and stability of this method and we use regularization techniques to stabilize it. Finally, we apply this method to the single lens, high-magnification transit events of OGLE-2004-BLG-254 (SAAO-I),... 

Solid inflation can support a long period of anisotropic inflation. We calculate the statistical anisotropies in the scalar and tensor power spectra and their cross-correlation in anisotropic solid inflation. The tensor-scalar cross-correlation can either be positive or negative, which impacts the statistical anisotropies of the TT and TB spectra in CMB map more significantly compared with the tensor self-correlation. The tensor power spectrum contains potentially comparable contributions from quadrupole and octopole angular patterns, which is different from the power spectra of scalar, the cross-correlation or the scalar bispectrum, where the quadrupole type statistical anisotropy dominates... 

As an alternative to dark matter models, Modified Gravity (MOG) theory is a covariant modification of Einstein gravity. The theory introduces two additional scalar fields and one vector field. The aim is to explain the dynamics of astronomical systems based only on their baryonic matter. The effect of the vector field in the theory resembles a Lorentz force where each particle has a charge proportional to its inertial mass. The weak field approximation of MOG is derived by perturbing the metric and the fields around Minkowski space-time. We obtain an effective gravitational potential which yields the Newtonian attractive force plus a repulsive Yukawa force. This potential, in addition to the... 

We analyze MOA-2010-BLG-311, a high magnification (A max > 600) microlensing event with complete data coverage over the peak, making it very sensitive to planetary signals. We fit this event with both a point lens and a two-body lens model and find that the two-body lens model is a better fit but with only Δχ2 ∼ 80. The preferred mass ratio between the lens star and its companion is q = 10-3.7 ± 0.1, placing the candidate companion in the planetary regime. Despite the formal significance of the planet, we show that because of systematics in the data the evidence for a planetary companion to the lens is too tenuous to claim a secure detection. When combined with analyses of other... 

We study the wave optics features of gravitational microlensing by a binary lens composed of a planet and a parent star. In this system, the source star near the caustic line produces a pair of images in which they can play the role of secondary sources for the observer. This optical system is similar to the Young double-slit experiment. The coherent wavefronts from a source on the lens plane can form a diffraction pattern on the observer plane. This diffraction pattern has two modes from the close- and wide-pair images. From the observational point of view, we study the possibility of detecting this effect through the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project in the resonance and...