KMT-2018-BLG-1025Lb: microlensing super-Earth planet orbiting a low-mass star

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting a low-mass star through microlensing, revealing new degeneracies in the analysis and expanding the catalog of such planets.

Contribution

It presents the detection and analysis of a super-Earth via microlensing, identifying new degeneracies in the light curve interpretation and estimating the planet's properties.

Findings

Discovered a super-Earth planet with mass around 4-6 Earth masses.

Identified three degenerate solutions, including a new type of degeneracy.

Estimated the planet's host star to be a low-mass star at about 6-7 kpc distance.

Abstract

We aim to find missing microlensing planets hidden in the unanalyzed lensing events of previous survey data. For this purpose, we conduct a systematic inspection of high-magnification microlensing events, with peak magnifications $A_{\rm peak}\gtrsim 30$, in the data collected from high-cadence surveys in and before the 2018 season. From this investigation, we identify an anomaly in the lensing light curve of the event KMT-2018-BLG-1025. The analysis of the light curve indicates that the anomaly is caused by a very low mass-ratio companion to the lens. We identify three degenerate solutions, in which the ambiguity between a pair of solutions (solutions B) is caused by the previously known close--wide degeneracy, and the degeneracy between these and the other solution (solution A) is a new type that has not been reported before. The estimated mass ratio between the planet and host is $q\sim 0.8\times 10^{-4}$ for the solution A and $q\sim 1.6\times 10^{-4}$ for the solutions B. From the Bayesian analysis conducted with measured observables, we estimate that the masses of the planet and host and the distance to the lens are $(M_{\rm p}, M_{\rm h}, D_{\rm L})\sim (6.1~M_\oplus, 0.22~M_\odot, 6.7~{\rm kpc})$ for the solution A and $\sim (4.4~M_\oplus, 0.08~M_\odot, 7.5~{\rm kpc})$ for the solutions B. The planet mass is in the category of a super-Earth regardless of the solutions, making the planet the eleventh super-Earth planet, with masses lying between those of Earth and the Solar system's ice giants, discovered by microlensing.