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We report on the mass and distance measurements of two single-lens events from the 2015 emph{Spitzer} microlensing campaign. With both finite-source effect and microlens parallax measurements, we find that the lens of OGLE-2015-BLG-1268 is very likely a brown dwarf. Assuming that the source star lies behind the same amount of dust as the Bulge red clump, we find the lens is a $45pm7$ $M_{rm J}$ brown dwarf at $5.9pm1.0$ kpc. The lens of of the second event, OGLE-2015-BLG-0763, is a $0.50pm0.04$ $M_odot$ star at $6.9pm1.0$ kpc. We show that the probability to definitively measure the mass of isolated microlenses is dramatically increased once simultaneous ground- and space-based observations are conducted.
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We have obtained low-resolution optical (0.7-0.98 micron) and near-infrared (1.11-1.34 micron and 0.8-2.5 micron) spectra of twelve isolated planetary-mass candidates (J = 18.2-19.9 mag) of the 3-Myr sigma Orionis star cluster with a view to determining the spectroscopic properties of very young, substellar dwarfs and assembling a complete cluster mass function. We have classified our targets by visual comparison with high- and low-gravity standards and by measuring newly defined spectroscopic indices. We derived L0-L4.5 and M9-L2.5 using high- and low-gravity standards, respectively. Our targets reveal clear signposts of youth, thus corroborating their cluster membership and planetary masses (6-13 Mjup). These observations complete the sigma Orionis mass function by spectroscopically confirming the planetary-mass domain to a confidence level of $sim$75 percent. The comparison of our spectra with BT-Settl solar metallicity model atmospheres yields a temperature scale of 2350-1800 K and a low surface gravity of log g ~ 4.0 [cm/s2], as would be expected for young planetary-mass objects. We discuss the properties of the cluster least-massive population as a function of spectral type. We have also obtained the first optical spectrum of S Ori 70, a T dwarf in the direction of sigma Orionis. Our data provide reference optical and near-infrared spectra of very young L dwarfs and a mass function that may be used as templates for future studies of low-mass substellar objects and exoplanets. The extrapolation of the sigma Orionis mass function to the solar neighborhood may indicate that isolated planetary-mass objects with temperatures of 200-300 K and masses in the interval 6-13-Mjup may be as numerous as very low-mass stars.
Microlensing events can be used to directly measure the masses of single field stars to a precision of $sim$1-10%. The majority of direct mass measurements for stellar and sub-stellar objects typically only come from observations of binary systems. Hence microlensing provides an important channel for direct mass measurements of single stars. The Gaia satellite has observed $sim$1.7 billion objects, and analysis of the second data release has recently yielded numerous event predictions for the next few decades. However, the Gaia catalog is incomplete for nearby very-low-mass objects such as brown dwarfs for which mass measurements are most crucial. We employ a catalog of very-low-mass objects from Pan-STARRS data release 1 (PDR1) as potential lens stars, and we use the objects from Gaia data release 2 (GDR2) as potential source stars. We then search for future microlensing events up to the year 2070. The Pan-STARRS1 objects are first cross-matched with GDR2 to remove any that are present in both catalogs. This leaves a sample of 1,718 possible lenses. We fit MIST isochrones to the Pan-STARRS1, AllWISE and 2MASS photometry to estimate their masses. We then compute their paths on the sky, along with the paths of the GDR2 source objects, until the year 2070, and search for potential microlensing events. Source-lens pairs that will produce a microlensing signal with an astrometric amplitude of greater than 0.131 mas, or a photometric amplitude of greater than 0.4 mmag, are retained.
We present the first space-based microlens parallax measurement of an isolated star. From the striking differences in the lightcurve as seen from Earth and from Spitzer (~1 AU to the West), we infer a projected velocity v_helio,projected ~ 250 km/s, which strongly favors a lens in the Galactic Disk with mass M=0.23 +- 0.07 M_sun and distance D_L=3.1 +- 0.4 kpc. An ensemble of such measurements drawn from our ongoing program could be used to measure the single-lens mass function including dark objects, and also is necessary for measuring the Galactic distribution of planets since the ensemble reflects the underlying Galactic distribution of microlenses. We study the application of the many ideas to break the four-fold degeneracy first predicted by Refsdal 50 years ago. We find that this degeneracy is clearly broken, but by two unanticipated mechanisms.
Gravitational microlensing can detect isolated stellar-mass black holes (BHs), which are believed to be the dominant form of Galactic BHs according to population synthesis models. Previous searches for BH events in microlensing data focused on long-timescale events with significant microlensing parallax detections. Here we show that, although BH events preferentially have long timescales, the microlensing parallax amplitudes are so small that in most cases the parallax signals cannot be detected statistically significantly. We then identify OGLE-2006-BLG-044 to be a candidate BH event because of its long timescale and small microlensing parallax. Our findings have implications to future BH searches in microlensing data.
We present an outline of basic assumptions and governing structural equations describing atmospheres of substellar mass objects, in particular the extrasolar giant planets and brown dwarfs. Although most of the presentation of the physical and numerical background is generic, details of the implementation pertain mostly to the code CoolTlusty. We also present a review of numerical approaches and computer codes devised to solve the structural equations, and make a critical evaluation of their efficiency and accuracy.
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