Astrometric Detectability of Parallax Effect in Gravitational Microlensing Events

중력렌즈 사건의 측성적 시차효과 검출에 대한 연구

  • HAN CHEONGHO (Department of Astronomy & Space Science, Chungbuk National University)
  • Published : 2000.06.01

Abstract

The lens mass determined from the photometrically obtained Einstein time scale suffers from large uncertainty due to the lens parameter degeneracy. The uncertainty can be substantially reduced if the mass is determined from the lens proper motion obtained from astrometric measurements of the source image centroid shifts, ${\delta}{\theta}_c$, by using high precision interferometers from space-based platform such as the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), and ground-based interferometers soon available on several 8-10m class telescopes. However, for the complete resolution of the lens parameter degeneracy it is required to determine the lens parallax by measuring the parallax-induced deviations in the centroid shifts trajectory, ${\Delta}{\delta}{\theta}_c$ aloe. In this paper, we investigate the detectabilities of ${\delta}{\theta}_c$ and ${\Delta}{\delta}{\theta}_c$ by determining the distributions of the maximum centroid shifts, $f({\delta}{\theta}_{c,max})$, and the average maximum deviations, $(<{\Delta}{\delta}_{c,max}>)$, for different types of Galactic microlensing events caused by various masses. From this investigation, we find that as long as source stars are bright enough for astrometric observations it is expected that $f({\delta}{\theta}_c)$ for most events caused by lenses with masses greater than 0.1 $M_\bigodot$ regardless of the event types can be easily detected from observations by using not only the SIM (with a detection threshold but also the ${\delta}{\theta}_{th}\;\~3{\mu}as)$ but also the ground-based interferometers $(with\;{\delta}{\theta}_{th}\;\~3{\mu}as)$. However, from ground-based observations, it will be difficult to detect ${\Delta}{\delta}{\theta}_c$ for most Galactic bulge self-lensing events, and the detection will be restricted only for small fractions of disk-bulge and halo-LMC events for which the deviations are relatively large. From observations by using the SIM, on the other hand, detecting ${\Delta}{\delta}{\theta}_c$ will be possible for majority of disk and halo events and for a substantial fraction of bulge self-lensing events. For the complete resolution of the lens parameter degeneracy, therefore, SIM observations will be essential.

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