2002/07/24 by B. Scott Gaudi, Gaudi, B. Scott
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Spacecraft Dynamics and Control #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0207533
8 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the ASP Conference Series: Scientific Frontiers in Research on Extrasolar Planets, eds. D. Deming and S. Seager. Also presented at the Ringberg Workshop on Gravitational Lenses
openalex publication_date 2002/07/24 · arxiv created 2002/09/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
I review results from, and future prospects for, microlensing searches for extrasolar planets. Analyses of well-sampled microlensing light curves by several collaborations have demonstrated that current searches are sensitive to Jupiter-mass planets with few AU separations from M-dwarfs in the Galactic bulge. To date, however, no unambiguous planetary detections have been made. Detailed analysis has shown that this null result implies that <33% of typical stars (i.e. M-dwarfs) in the Galactic bulge have Jupiter-mass companions with separations between 1.5 and 4 AU, and <45% have three-Jupiter-mass companions between 1 and 7 AU. The recent dramatic increase in the number of alerts per year will allow ongoing microlensing searches to probe companion fractions of a few percent within a few years.