Brown dwarf companions in binaries detected from the 2021 season high-cadence microlensing surveys

As a part of the project aiming to build a homogeneous sample of binary-lens (2L1S) events containing brown-dwarf (BD) companions, we investigate the 2021 season microlensing data collected by the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) survey. For this purpose, we first identify 2L1S events by conducting systematic analyses of anomalous lensing events. We then select candidate BD-companion events by applying the criterion that the mass ratio between the lens components is less than $q_{\rm th}\sim 0.1$. From this procedure, we find four binary-lens events including KMT-2021-BLG-0588, KMT-2021-BLG-1110, KMT-2021-BLG-1643, and KMT-2021-BLG-1770, for which the estimated mass ratios are $q\sim 0.10$, 0.07, 0.08, and 0.15, respectively. The event KMT-2021-BLG-1770 is selected as a candidate despite the fact that the mass ratio is slightly greater than $q_{\rm th}$ because the lens mass expected from the measured short time scale of the event, $t_{\rm E}\sim 7.6$~days, is small. From the Bayesian analyses, we estimate that the primary and companion masses are $(M_1/M_\odot, M_2/M_\odot)= (0.54^{+0.31}_{-0.24}, 0.053^{+0.031}_{-0.023})$ for KMT-2021-BLG-0588L, $(0.74^{+0.27}_{-0.35}, 0.055^{+0.020}_{-0.026})$ for KMT-2021-BLG-1110L, $(0.73^{+0.24}_{-0.17}, 0.061^{+0.020}_{-0.014})$ for KMT-2021-BLG-1643L, and $(0.13^{+0.18}_{-0.07}, 0.020^{+0.028}_{-0.011})$ for KMT-2021-BLG-1770L. It is estimated that the probabilities of the lens companions being in the BD mass range are 82\%, 85\%, 91\%, and 59\% for the individual events. For confirming the BD nature of the lens companions found in this and previous works by directly imaging the lenses from future high-resolution adaptive-optics (AO) followup observations, we provide the lens-source separations expected in 2030, which is an approximate year of the first AO light on 30~m class telescopes.Comment: 11 pages, 10 tables, 8 figure

KMT-2021-BLG-1150Lb: Microlensing planet detected through a densely covered planetary-caustic signal

Recently, there have been reports of various types of degeneracies in the interpretation of planetary signals induced by planetary caustics. In this work, we check whether such degeneracies persist in the case of well-covered signals by analyzing the lensing event KMT-2021-BLG-1150, for which the light curve exhibits a densely and continuously covered short-term anomaly. In order to identify degenerate solutions, we thoroughly investigate the parameter space by conducting dense grid searches for the lensing parameters. We then check the severity of the degeneracy among the identified solutions. We identify a pair of planetary solutions resulting from the well-known inner-outer degeneracy, and find that interpreting the anomaly is not subject to any degeneracy other than the inner-outer degeneracy. The measured parameters of the planet separation (normalized to the Einstein radius) and mass ratio between the lens components are $(s, q)_{\rm in}\sim (1.297, 1.10\times 10^{-3})$ for the inner solution and $(s, q)_{\rm out}\sim (1.242, 1.15\times 10^{-3})$ for the outer solution. According to a Bayesian estimation, the lens is a planetary system consisting of a planet with a mass $M_{\rm p}=0.88^{+0.38}_{-0.36}~M_{\rm J}$ and its host with a mass $M_{\rm h}=0.73^{+0.32}_{-0.30}~M_\odot$ lying toward the Galactic center at a distance $D_{\rm L} =3.8^{+1.3}_{-1.2}$~kpc. By conducting analyses using mock data sets prepared to mimic those obtained with data gaps and under various observational cadences, it is found that gaps in data can result in various degenerate solutions, while the observational cadence does not pose a serious degeneracy problem as long as the anomaly feature can be delineated.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

KMT-2021-BLG-1547Lb: Giant microlensing planet detected through a signal deformed by source binarity

We investigate the previous microlensing data collected by the KMTNet survey in search of anomalous events for which no precise interpretations of the anomalies have been suggested. From this investigation, we find that the anomaly in the lensing light curve of the event KMT-2021-BLG-1547 is approximately described by a binary-lens (2L1S) model with a lens possessing a giant planet, but the model leaves unexplained residuals. We investigate the origin of the residuals by testing more sophisticated models that include either an extra lens component (3L1S model) or an extra source star (2L2S model) to the 2L1S configuration of the lens system. From these analyses, we find that the residuals from the 2L1S model originate from the existence of a faint companion to the source. The 2L2S solution substantially reduces the residuals and improves the model fit by $\Delta\chi^2=67.1$ with respect to the 2L1S solution. The 3L1S solution also improves the fit, but its fit is worse than that of the 2L2S solution by $\Delta\chi^2=24.7$. According to the 2L2S solution, the lens of the event is a planetary system with planet and host masses $(M_{\rm p}/M_{\rm J}, M_{\rm h}/M_\odot)=\left( 1.47^{+0.64}_{-0.77}, 0.72^{+0.32}_{-0.38}\right)$ lying at a distance \D_{\rm L} =5.07^{+0.98}_{-1.50}~kpc, and the source is a binary composed of a subgiant primary of a late G or an early K spectral type and a main-sequence companion of a K spectral type. The event demonstrates the need of sophisticated modeling for unexplained anomalies for the construction of a complete microlensing planet sample.Comment: 9 pages, 4 tables, 7 figure

Four microlensing giant planets detected through signals produced by minor-image perturbations

Funding: Work by C.H. was supported by the grants of National Research Foundation of Korea (2019R1A2C2085. This research was supported by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute under the R&D program (Project No. 2023-1-832-03) supervised by the Ministry of Science and ICT. The MOA project is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP24253004, JP26247023, JP23340064, JP15H00781, JP16H06287, JP17H02871 and JP22H00153. J.C.Y., I.G.S., and S.J.C. acknowledge support from NSF Grant No. AST-2108414. Y.S. acknowledges support from NSF Grant No. 2020740. C.R. was supported by the Research fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This work was authored by employees of Caltech/IPAC under Contract No. 80GSFC21R0032 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. V.B. is supported by PRIN 2022 CUP D53D23002590006. R.F.J. acknowledges support for this project provided by ANID’s Millennium Science Initiative through grant ICN12_009, awarded to the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS), and by ANID’s Basal project FB210003. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 101004719 (OPTICON - RadioNet Pilot). This work is supported by the Polish MNiSW grant DIR/WK/2018/12.Aims. We investigated the nature of the anomalies appearing in four microlensing events KMT-2020-BLG-0757, KMT-2022-BLG-0732, KMT-2022-BLG-1787, and KMT-2022-BLG-1852. The light curves of these events commonly exhibit initial bumps followed by subsequent troughs that extend across a substantial portion of the light curves. Methods. We performed thorough modeling of the anomalies to elucidate their characteristics. Despite their prolonged durations, which differ from the usual brief anomalies observed in typical planetary events, our analysis revealed that each anomaly in these events originated from a planetary companion located within the Einstein ring of the primary star. It was found that the initial bump arouse when the source star crossed one of the planetary caustics, while the subsequent trough feature occurred as the source traversed the region of minor image perturbations lying between the pair of planetary caustics. Results. The estimated masses of the host and planet, their mass ratios, and the distance to the discovered planetary systems are (Mhost/M⊙, Mplanet/MJ, q/10−3, DL/kpc) = (0.58−0.30+0.33, 10.71−5.61+6.17, 17.61 ± 2.25, 6.67−1.30+0.93) for KMT-2020-BLG-0757, (0.53−0.31+0.31, 1.12−0.65+0.65, 2.01 ± 0.07, 6.66−1.84+1.19) for KMT-2022-BLG-0732, (0.42−0.23+0.32, 6.64−3.64+4.98, 15.07 ± 0.86, 7.55−1.30+0.89) for KMT-2022-BLG-1787, and (0.32−0.19+0.34, 4.98−2.94+5.42, 8.74 ± 0.49, 6.27−1.15+0.90) for KMT-2022-BLG-1852. These parameters indicate that all the planets are giants with masses exceeding the mass of Jupiter in our solar system and the hosts are low-mass stars with masses substantially less massive than the Sun.Peer reviewe

Systematic KMTNet Planetary Anomaly Search. V. Complete Sample of 2018 Prime-Field

We complete the analysis of all 2018 prime-field microlensing planets identified by the KMTNet AnomalyFinder. Among the 10 previously unpublished events with clear planetary solutions, 8 are either unambiguously planetary or are very likely to be planetary in nature: OGLE-2018-BLG-1126, KMT-2018-BLG-2004, OGLE-2018-BLG-1647, OGLE-2018-BLG-1367, OGLE-2018-BLG-1544, OGLE-2018-BLG-0932, OGLE-2018-BLG-1212, and KMT-2018-BLG-2718. Combined with the 4 previously published new AnomalyFinder events and 12 previously published (or in preparation) planets that were discovered by eye, thismakes a total of 24 2018 prime-field planets discovered or recovered by AnomalyFinder. Together with a paper in preparation on 2018 sub-prime planets, this work lays the basis for the first statistical analysis of the planet mass-ratio function based on planets identified in KMTNet data. By systematically applying the heuristic analysis of Hwang et al. (2022) to each event, we identify the small modification in their formalism that is needed to unify the so-called close/wide and inner/outer degeneracies, as conjectured byComment: 22 pages, 14 tables, 15 figure

Brown dwarf companions in microlensing binaries detected during the 2016–2018 seasons

Aims. With the aim of finding microlensing binaries containing brown dwarf (BD) companions, we investigate the microlensing survey data collected during the 2016–2018 seasons. Methods. For this purpose, we first modeled lensing events with light curves exhibiting anomaly features that are likely to be produced by binary lenses. We then sorted out BD companion binary-lens events by applying the criterion that the companion-to-primary mass ratio is q ≲ 0.1. With this procedure, we identify six binaries with candidate BD companions: OGLE-2016-BLG-0890L, MOA-2017-BLG-477L, OGLE-2017-BLG-0614L, KMT-2018-BLG-0357L, OGLE-2018-BLG-1489L, and OGLE-2018-BLG-0360L. Results. We estimated the masses of the binary companions by conducting Bayesian analyses using the observables of the individual lensing events. According to the Bayesian estimation of the lens masses, the probabilities for the lens companions of the events OGLE-2016-BLG-0890, OGLE-2017-BLG-0614, OGLE-2018-BLG-1489, and OGLE-2018-BLG-0360 to be in the BD mass regime are very high with PBD > 80%. For MOA-2017-BLG-477 and KMT-2018-BLG-0357, the probabilities are relatively low with PBD = 61% and 69%, respectively

MOA-2022-BLG-249Lb: Nearby microlensing super-Earth planet detected from high-cadence surveys

Aims. We investigate the data collected by the high-cadence microlensing surveys during the 2022 season in search of planetary signals appearing in the light curves of microlensing events. From this search, we find that the lensing event MOA-2022-BLG-249 exhibits a brief positive anomaly that lasted for about one day, with a maximum deviation of ~0.2 mag from a single-source, single-lens model. Methods. We analyzed the light curve under the two interpretations of the anomaly: one originated by a low-mass companion to the lens (planetary model) and the other originated by a faint companion to the source (binary-source model). Results. We find that the anomaly is better explained by the planetary model than the binary-source model. We identified two solutions rooted in the inner-outer degeneracy and for both of them, the estimated planet-to-host mass ratio, q ~ 8 × 10−5, is very small. With the constraints provided by the microlens parallax and the lower limit on the Einstein radius, as well as the blend-flux constraint, we find that the lens is a planetary system, in which a super-Earth planet, with a mass of (4.83 ± 1.44) Μ⊕, orbits a low-mass host star, with a mass of (0.18 ± 0.05) M⊙, lying in the Galactic disk at a distance of (2.00 ± 0.42) kpc. The planet detection demonstrates the elevated microlensing sensitivity of the current high-cadence lensing surveys to low-mass planets

Probable brown dwarf companions detected in binary microlensing events during the 2018-2020 seasons of the KMTNet survey

We inspect the microlensing data of the KMTNet survey collected during the 2018--2020 seasons in order to find lensing events produced by binaries with brown-dwarf companions. In order to pick out binary-lens events with candidate BD lens companions, we conduct systematic analyses of all anomalous lensing events observed during the seasons. By applying the selection criterion with mass ratio between the lens components of $0.03\lesssim q\lesssim 0.1$, we identify four binary-lens events with candidate BD companions, including KMT-2018-BLG-0321, KMT-2018-BLG-0885, KMT-2019-BLG-0297, and KMT-2019-BLG-0335. For the individual events, we present the interpretations of the lens systems and measure the observables that can constrain the physical lens parameters. The masses of the lens companions estimated from the Bayesian analyses based on the measured observables indicate that the probabilities for the lens companions to be in the brown-dwarf mass regime are high: 59\%, 68\%, 66\%, and 66\% for the four events respectively.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

KMT-2022-BLG-0475Lb and KMT-2022-BLG-1480Lb: Microlensing ice giants detected via the non-caustic-crossing channel

Aims. We investigate the microlensing data collected in the 2022 season from high-cadence microlensing surveys in order to find weak signals produced by planetary companions to lenses. Methods. From these searches, we find that two lensing events, KMT-2022-BLG-0475 and KMT-2022-BLG-1480, exhibit weak short-term anomalies. From a detailed modeling of the lensing light curves, we determine that the anomalies are produced by planetary companions with a mass ratio to the primary of q ~ 1.8 × 10−4 for KMT-2022-BLG-0475L and q ~ 4.3 × 10−4 for KMT-2022-BLG-1480L. Results. We estimate that the host and planet masses and the projected planet-host separation are (Mh/M⊙, Mp/MU, a⊥/au) = (0.43−0.23+0.35, 1.73−0.92+1.42, 2.03−0.38+0.25) for KMT-2022-BLG-0475L and (0.18−0.09+0.16, 1.82−0.92+1.60, 1.22−0.14+0.15) for KMT-2022-BLG-1480L, where MU denotes the mass of Uranus. The two planetary systems have some characteristics in common: the primaries of the lenses are early-mid M dwarfs that lie in the Galactic bulge, and the companions are ice giants that lie beyond the snow lines of the planetary systems