OGLE-2016-BLG-0596Lb: High-Mass Planet From High-Magnification Pure-Survey Microlensing Event

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a high-mass-ratio exoplanet through a systematic analysis of archival high-magnification microlensing data, highlighting the potential for uncovering more such planets and analyzing detection sensitivities.

Contribution

It introduces a new systematic approach to find high-mass-ratio planets in archival microlensing data and analyzes the transition in detection methods in the observational parameter space.

Findings

Discovery of a planet with a mass ratio of 0.012.

No statistical difference in detection sensitivity by mass ratio.

Survey+followup is more sensitive near the Einstein ring.

Abstract

We report the discovery of a high mass-ratio planet $q=0.012$, i.e., 13 times higher than the Jupiter/Sun ratio. The host mass is not presently measured but can be determined or strongly constrained from adaptive optics imaging. The planet was discovered in a small archival study of high-magnification events in pure-survey microlensing data, which was unbiased by the presence of anomalies. The fact that it was previously unnoticed may indicate that more such planets lie in archival data and could be discovered by similar systematic study. In order to understand the transition from predominantly survey+followup to predominately survey-only planet detections, we conduct the first analysis of these detections in the observational $(s,q)$ plane. Here $s$ is projected separation in units of the Einstein radius. We find some evidence that survey+followup is relatively more sensitive to planets near the Einstein ring, but that there is no statistical difference in sensitivity by mass ratio.