Microlensing planet detection via geosynchronous and low Earth orbit satellites

Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Paris 6 et CNRS, UMR 7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, 98bis bd Arago, 75014 Paris, France
e-mail: mogavero@iap.fr; beaulieu@iap.fr

Received: 16 September 2015
Accepted: 16 October 2015

Abstract

Planet detection through microlensing is usually limited by a well-known degeneracy in the Einstein timescale t_E, which prevents mass and distance of the lens to be univocally determined. It has been shown that a satellite in geosynchronous orbit could provide masses and distances for most standard planetary events (t_E ≈ 20 days) via a microlens parallax measurement. This paper extends the analysis to shorter Einstein timescales, t_E ≈ 1 day, when dealing with the case of Jupiter-mass lenses. We then study the capabilities of a low Earth orbit satellite on even shorter timescales, t_E ≈ 0.1 days. A Fisher matrix analysis is employed to predict how the 1-σ error on parallax depends on t_E and the peak magnification of the microlensing event. It is shown that a geosynchronous satellite could detect parallaxes for Jupiter-mass free floaters and discover planetary systems around very low-mass brown dwarfs. Moreover, a low Earth orbit satellite could lead to the discovery of Earth-mass free-floating planets. Limitations to these results can be the strong requirements on the photometry, the effects of blending, and in the case of the low orbit, the Earth’s umbra.