Periodic Signals in Binary Microlensing Events

Details Periodic Signals in Binary Microlensing Events Periodic Signals in Binary Microlensing Events

2011-12-20

arxiv.org/abs/1112.4608v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Galaxy Astrophysics

10 pages, to be submitted to ApJ

Scientific paper

Gravitational microlensing events provide a potentially powerful tool for the study of stellar populations. In particular, they can be used to discover and study a variety of binary systems. A large number of binary lenses have already been found by the microlensing surveys and a few of these systems show strong evidence of orbital motion on the timescale of the lensing event. We expect that more of such binary lenses will be detected in the future. For binaries whose orbital period is comparable to the event duration, the orbital motion can cause the lensing signal to deviate drastically from that of a static binary lens. The most striking property of such lightcurves is the presence of quasi-periodic features, produced as the source traverses the same regions in the rotating lens plane. These repeated features contain information about the orbital period of the lens. If this period can be extracted, a lot can be learned about the lensing system even without performing a time-consuming detailed lightcurve modeling. However, the relative transverse motion between the source and the lens significantly complicates the problem of period extraction. To resolve this difficulty, we present a modification to the standard Lomb-Scargle periodogram analysis. We test our method for four representative binary lens systems and demonstrate its efficiency in correctly extracting binary orbital periods.

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