Detection of planets in extremely weak central perturbation microlensing events via next-generation ground-based surveys

Abstract

Even though the recently discovered high-magnification event MOA-2010-BLG-311 had complete coverage over the peak, confident planet detection did not happen due to extremely weak central perturbations (fractional deviations of $\lesssim 2\%$). For confident detection of planets in extremely weak central perturbation (EWCP) events, it is necessary to have both high cadence monitoring and high photometric accuracy better than those of current follow-up observation systems.The next-generation ground-based observation project, KMTNet (Korea Microlensing Telescope Network), satisfies the conditions. We estimate the probability of occurrence of EWCP events with fractional deviations of $\leq 2\%$ in high-magnification events and the efficiency of detecting planets in the EWCP events using the KMTNet. From this study, we find that the EWCP events occur with a frequency of $> 50\%$ in the case of $\lesssim 100\ M_{\rm E}$ planets with separations of $0.2\ {\rm AU} \lesssim d \lesssim 20\ {\rm AU}$. We find that for main-sequence and subgiant source stars, $\gtrsim 1\ M_{\rm E}$ planets in EWCP events with the deviations $\leq 2\%$ can be detected $> 50\%$ in a certain range that changes with the planet mass. However, it is difficult to detect planets in EWCP events of bright stars like giant stars, because it is easy for KMTNet to be saturated around the peak of the events with a constant exposure time. EWCP events are caused by close, intermediate, and wide planetary systems with low-mass planets and close and wide planetary systems with massive planets. Therefore, we expect that a much greater variety of planetary systems than those already detected, which are mostly intermediate planetary systems regardless of the planet mass, will be significantly detected in the near future.