Probability of simultaneous parallax detection for free-floating planet microlensing events near Galactic Centre

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2020-05, Vol.494 (3), p.3235-3252
• Main Author: Ban, M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa786

ABSTRACT The event rate and the efficiency of mass estimation for free-floating planet (FFP) microlensing events were determined from the simulation of the simultaneous parallax observations by Euclid, WFIRST, and LSST. The stellar population from the Besançon Galactic model toward (l, b) = (1°, −1.°75) was applied to our 3D microlensing model, and 30 000 parallax observations were simulated for each following FFP lens masses: Jupiter mass, Neptune mass, and Earth mass assuming the population of one FFP per star. The interstellar dust, unresolved stellar background, nearby star blending was modelled. A signal-to-noise limit considering a finite source effect determined the event detectability. The Euclid–WFIRST combination yielded 30.7 Jupiter-mass FFPs during two 30-d periods per year in parallax observation. The parallax event rate decreases to 3.9 FFPs for Earth-mass planets. The mass estimation from the parallax light curve allowed recovery of FFP masses to within a factor of 2 for 20–26 per cent of cases. The Euclid–LSST combination yielded 34.5 Jupiter-mass FFPs down to 0.5 Earth-mass FFPs for the same periods and the mass is recovered to within a factor of 2 in 20–40 per cent of cases. The event rate will be normalized by the unknown FFP abundance to recover the number of expected detections.