OGLE-2014-BLG-0319: A Sub-Jupiter-Mass Planetary Event Encountered Degeneracy with Different Mass Ratios and Lens-Source Relative Proper Motions

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a sub-Jovian-mass exoplanet via microlensing, resolving model degeneracies using Galactic priors and Bayesian analysis, and discusses implications for statistical studies of planetary populations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to resolve microlensing model degeneracies with Galactic priors, enabling more accurate estimation of exoplanet properties.

Findings

The planet has a mass of approximately 0.49 Jupiter masses.

Degenerate models with unreasonably small proper motions were ruled out.

Galactic priors help resolve degeneracies in microlensing analyses.

Abstract

We report the discovery of a sub-Jovian-mass planet, OGLE-2014-BLG-0319Lb. The characteristics of this planet will be added into a future extended statistical analysis of the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) collaboration. The planetary anomaly of the light curve is characterized by MOA and OGLE survey observations and results in three degenerate models with different planetary mass-ratios of $q=(10.3,6.6,4.5)\times10^{-4}$, respectively. We find that the last two models require unreasonably small lens-source relative proper motions of $\mu_{\rm rel}\sim1\;{\rm mas/yr}$. Considering Galactic prior probabilities, we rule out these two models from the final result. We conduct a Bayesian analysis to estimate physical properties of the lens system using a Galactic model and find that the lens system is composed of a $0.49^{+0.35}_{-0.27}\;M_{\rm Jup}$ sub-Jovian planet orbiting a $0.47^{+0.33}_{-0.25}\; M_{\odot}$ M-dwarf near the Galactic bulge. This analysis demonstrates that Galactic priors are useful to resolve this type of model degeneracy. This is important for estimating the mass ratio function statistically. However, this method would be unlikely successful in shorter timescale events, which are mostly due to low-mass objects, like brown dwarfs or free-floating planets. Therefore, careful treatment is needed for estimating the mass ratio function of the companions around such low-mass hosts which only the microlensing can probe.