Characterizing Low-Mass Binaries From Observation of Long Time-scale Caustic-crossing Gravitational Microlensing Events

Details Characterizing Low-Mass Binaries From Observation of Long Time-scale Caustic-crossing Gravitational Microlensing Events Characterizing Low-Mass Binaries From Observation of Long Time-scale Caustic-crossing Gravitational Microlensing Events

2012-04-13

arxiv.org/abs/1204.2869v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

8 pages, 5 figures

Scientific paper

Despite astrophysical importance of binary star systems, detections are limited to those located in small ranges of separations, distances, and masses and thus it is necessary to use a variety of observational techniques for a complete view of stellar multiplicity across a broad range of physical parameters. In this paper, we report the detections and measurements of 2 binaries discovered from observations of microlensing events MOA-2011-BLG-090 and OGLE-2011-BLG-0417. Determinations of the binary masses are possible by simultaneously measuring the Einstein radius and the lens parallax from analyses of the well-resolved caustic-crossing parts of the light curve and the long-term deviation induced by the orbital motion of the Earth around the Sun, respectively. The measured masses of the binary components are 0.43 $M_{\odot}$ and 0.39 $M_{\odot}$ for MOA-2011-BLG-090 and 0.57 $M_{\odot}$ and 0.17 $M_{\odot}$ for OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 and thus both lens components of MOA-2011-BLG-090 and one component of OGLE-2011-BLG-0417 are M dwarfs, demonstrating the usefulness of microlensing in detecting binaries composed of low-mass components. From modeling of the light curves considering full Keplerian motion of the lens, we also measure the orbital parameters of the binaries. For both events, the caustic-crossing parts of the light curves, which are critical for determining the physical lens parameters, were resolved by high-cadence survey observations and thus it is expected that the number of microlensing binaries with measured physical parameters will increase in the future.

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