Characterizing OGLE-2014-BLG-1145: A Planetary Microlensing Event
 

Jonathan Brashear 
Ph.D. Candidate
Physics Department 
The Catholic University of America 

Wed, February 12, 2025 - 4:00 PM

Gravitational microlensing occurs when a lens star passes in front of a more distant background star, causing a time-dependent magnification of the background star's flux. When the lens star has a companion such as another star or a planetary companion, perturbations in the light curve seen from earth can reveal the presence of the companion. Microlensing is sensitive to cold exoplanets at wide separations from their host star, making it a valuable tool for detecting this population of exoplanets that other detection methods are less sensitive to. I will present an analysis of the microlensing event OGLE-2014-BLG-1145, revealing a new planet with mass ratio q~10^-3. I will discuss the entire process behind modeling a binary microlensing event, starting with the light curve fitting process. I will explain the degeneracies in the best fitting models, our estimation of the source properties, and the galactic model prior analysis that we use to estimate the physical properties of the lens system including the host mass, star-planet separation, planetary mass, and the distance of the lensing system.

Refreshments served at 3:45 PM

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