Sebastiano Calchi Novati

Microlensing has proven to be a valuable method for detecting objects that are too faint and/or distant to detect directly. In particular, it can detect both gravitationally bound and free-floating exoplanets, and is sensitive to regions of planetary parameter space that are difficult to probe by other means. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due to launch in September 2026, is expected to detect thousands of microlensing events, including >1400 bound exoplanetary systems, during the Roman Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey. Planning for this mission presented the challenge of needing to analyze such a large sample of events efficiently. Historically, the analysis of even a single event could take months, due to the large number of parameters in microlensing models and multiple degeneracies. In 2018 the microlensing community conducted a data challenge to stimulate development of more efficient and scalable software tools for the analysis of the data from this and other time domain surveys. Here we present the simulated challenge dataset with analysis of the submitted entries together with a discussion of lessons learned for future data challenges.

As part of the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (GBTDS), the Nancy Grace Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey (RGES) will use microlensing to discover cold outer planets and free-floating planets not bound to stars. NASA has established several science requirements for the GBTDS to ensure RGES success. A key advantage of RGES is Roman’s high angular resolution, which will allow detection of flux from many host stars. One requirement specifies that Roman must measure the masses and distances of 40% of detected planet hosts with 20% precision or better. To test this, we simulated microlensing events toward the GBTDS fields and used Fisher matrix analysis to estimate light curve parameter uncertainties. Combining these with Roman imaging observables (lens flux and relative lens–source proper motion), we estimated the achievable precision of lens mass and distance measurements. Using pyLIMASS , a publicly available code for estimating lens properties, we applied this analysis to 3000 simulated events. Assuming the A. Cassan et al. exoplanet mass function, we find that ≥40% of host stars meet the required 20% precision threshold, confirming that the GBTDS can satisfy the mission requirement. We validated our approach by comparing our inferred lens masses and distances to empirical measurements from detailed image-constrained light curve modeling of historical microlensing events with Hubble and Keck follow-up imaging. Our results agree within roughly 1 σ , demonstrating that both approaches yield consistent and reliable mass and distance estimates, and confirming the robustness of our simulations for Roman-era microlensing science.

We present pyLIMASS, a novel algorithm for estimating the physical properties of the lensing system in microlensing events. The main idea of pyLIMASS is to combine all available information regarding the microlensing event, defined as observables, and to estimate the parameter distributions of the system, such as the lens mass and distance. The algorithm is based on isochrones for the stars model and combines the observables using a Gaussian mixture approach. After describing the mathematical formalism and its implementation, we discuss the algorithm’s performance on simulated and published events. Generally, the pyLIMASS estimations are in good agreement (i.e., within 1σ) with the results of the selected published events, making it an effective tool to estimate the lens properties and their distribution. The applicability of the method was tested by using a catalog of realistically simulated events that could be observed by the future Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. By solely using constraints from the Roman lightcurves and images, pyLIMASS estimates the masses of the lens of the Roman catalog with a median precision of 20% with almost no bias.

We complete the analysis of planetary candidates found by the KMT AnomalyFinder for the 2017 prime fields that cover ∼13 deg². We report three unambiguous planets: OGLE-2017-BLG-0640, OGLE-2017-BLG-1275, and OGLE-2017-BLG-1237. The first two of these were not previously identified, while the last was not previously published due to technical complications induced by a nearby variable. We further report that a fourth anomalous event, the previously recognized OGLE-2017-BLG-1777, is very likely to be planetary, although its light curve requires unusually complex modeling because the lens and source both have orbiting companions. One of the three unambiguous planets, OGLE-2017-BLG-1275, is the first AnomalyFinder discovery that has a Spitzer microlens parallax measurement, π _E ≃ 0.045 ± 0.015, implying that this planetary system almost certainly lies in the Galactic bulge. In the order listed, the four planetary events have planet-host mass ratios q and normalized projected separations s of ( log q , s ) = ( − 2.31 , 0.61 ) , (−2.06, 0.63/1.09), (−2.10, 1.04), and (−2.86, 0.72). Combined with previously published events, the 2017 prime fields contain 11 unambiguous planets with well-measured q and one very likely candidate, of which three are AnomalyFinder discoveries. In addition to these 12, there are three other unambiguous planets with large uncertainties in q.

We systematically investigate Vandorou et al.’s claim to have detected the host star of the low-mass-ratio (q < 10⁻⁴) microlensing planet OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, via Keck adaptive optics (AO) measurements Δt = 4.12 yr after the event’s peak (t ₀). If correct, this measurement would contradict the microlens-parallax measurement derived from Spitzer observations taken near t ₀. We show that this host identification would be in 4σ conflict with the original ground-based relative lens–source proper-motion measurements. By contrast, Gould estimated a probability p = 10% that the “other star” resolved by single-epoch late-time AO would be a companion to the host or the microlensed source, which is much more probable than a 4σ statistical fluctuation. Independent of this proper-motion discrepancy, the kinematics of this host identification are substantially less probable than those of the Spitzer solution. Hence, this identification should not be accepted, pending additional observations that would either confirm or contradict it, which could be taken in 2023. Motivated by this tension, we present two additional investigations. We explore the possibility that Vandorou et al. identified the wrong “star” for their analysis. Astrometry of KMT and Keck images favors a star (or asterism) lying about 175 mas northwest of Vandorou et al.’s star. We also present event parameters from a combined fit to all survey data, which yields a more precise mass ratio, q = (4.6 ± 0.4) × 10⁻⁵. Finally, we discuss the broader implications of minimizing such false positives for the first measurement of the planet mass function, which will become possible when AO on next-generation telescopes are applied to microlensing planets.

We report the analysis of microlensing event OGLE-2017-BLG-1038, observed by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, Korean Microlensing Telescope Network, and Spitzer telescopes. The event is caused by a giant source star in the Galactic Bulge passing over a large resonant binary-lens caustic. The availability of space-based data allows the full set of physical parameters to be calculated. However, there exists an eightfold degeneracy in the parallax measurement. The four best solutions correspond to very-low-mass binaries near ( M 1 = 170 − 50 + 40 M J and M 2 = 110 − 30 + 20 M J ), or well below ( M 1 = 22.5 − 0.4 + 0.7 M J and M 2 = 13.3 − 0.3 + 0.4 M J ) the boundary between stars and brown dwarfs. A conventional analysis, with scaled uncertainties for Spitzer data, implies a very-low-mass brown-dwarf binary lens at a distance of 2 kpc. Compensating for systematic Spitzer errors using a Gaussian process model suggests that a higher mass M-dwarf binary at 6 kpc is equally likely. A Bayesian comparison based on a galactic model favors the larger-mass solutions. We demonstrate how this degeneracy can be resolved within the next 10 years through infrared adaptive-optics imaging with a 40 m class telescope.