Study of a strategy for parallax microlensing detection towards the Magellanic Clouds

¹ Department of Physics, Sharif University of Technology, PO Box 11365-9161, Tehran, Iran
² Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, PO Box 19395-5531, Tehran, Iran
³ Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire, IN2P3-CNRS, Université de Paris-Sud, BP 34, 91898 Orsay Cedex, France

Corresponding author: M. Moniez, moniez@lal.in2p3.fr

Received: 28 October 2002
Accepted: 18 August 2003

Abstract

In this article, we have investigated the possibility to distinguish between different galactic models through microlensing parallax studies. We show that a systematic search for parallax effects can be done using the currently running alert systems and complementary photometric telescopes, to distinguish between different lens distance distributions. We have considered two galactic dark compact object distributions, with total optical depths corresponding to the EROS current upper limits. These models correspond to two extreme hypotheses on a three component galactic structure made of a thin disk, a thick disk, and a spherically symmetric halo. Our study shows that for sub-solar mass lenses, an exposure of star  yr toward the LMC should allow one to distinguish between these two extreme models. In addition, the self-lensing hypothesis (lensing by LMC objects) can efficiently be tested through the method proposed here.