Parallax and orbital effects in astrometric microlensing with binary sources

TL;DR

This paper investigates how binary sources and their orbital and parallax effects influence astrometric microlensing signals, emphasizing the importance of these factors for accurate event parameter estimation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of binary source astrometric microlensing, including orbital motion and parallax effects, which are often overlooked in previous studies.

Findings

Orbital and parallax effects significantly alter astrometric signals.

Considering these effects improves the accuracy of lens-event parameter estimation.

Binary source signatures can be distinguished in astrometric data with proper modeling.

Abstract

In gravitational microlensing, binary systems may act as lenses or sources. Identifying lens binarity is generally easy especially in events characterized by caustic crossing since the resulting light curve exhibits strong deviations from smooth single-lensing light curve. On the contrary, light curves with minor deviations from a Paczy\'nski behaviour do not allow one to identify the source binarity. A consequence of the gravitational microlensing is the shift of the position of the multiple image centroid with respect to the source star location - the so called astrometric microlensing signal. When the astrometric signal is considered, the presence of a binary source manifests with a path that largely differs from that expected for single-source events. Here, we investigate the astrometric signatures of binary sources taking into account their orbital motion and the parallax effect due to the Earth motion, which turn out not to be negligible in most cases. We also show that considering the above-mentioned effects is important in the analysis of astrometric data in order to correctly estimate the lens-event parameters.