Predictions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey. V. Detection Rates of Multiplanetary Systems in High Magnification Microlensing Events

TL;DR

The paper assesses the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's capability to detect multi-planet systems via high-magnification microlensing, showing high detection efficiency for massive planets and estimating about 64 such events during the survey.

Contribution

This study provides the first detailed simulation-based analysis of Roman's ability to detect triple-lens microlensing systems, highlighting factors affecting detectability.

Findings

High detection efficiency (~90%) for systems with massive planets.

Detection rate of approximately 64 triple-lens events over the survey duration.

Detection likelihood depends on planetary mass ratios and caustic geometry.

Abstract

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will expand the reach of gravitational microlensing surveys by increasing the number of events monitored and the precision of their light curves. We investigate Roman's ability to detect triple-lens microlensing systems, cases where a foreground star with two bound exoplanets produces detectable anomalies in a microlensing event, using its planned high-cadence observations toward the Galactic bulge. We simulate a large set of high-magnification microlensing light curves based on Roman's expected survey characteristics. A detection criterion, based on a required $\chi^2$ improvement for a two-planet model, is applied to determine whether the second planet can be reliably distinguished from a single-planet (binary-lens) model. Our simulations show that the majority of two-planet microlensing events would be detectable with Roman. Events in which both planets are relatively massive (planet-star mass ratios of order $10^{-3}$), or in which the more massive planet occupies a favorable resonant configuration, produce strong central perturbations, resulting in detection efficiencies of roughly 90\%. By contrast, systems with only low-mass planets ($q \sim 10^{-4}$) or with less favorable alignments generate much weaker signals, which often fall below the detection threshold. In general, the planetary mass ratios and the resulting caustic geometry (e.g., central caustic size in resonant versus wide/close orbits) are the dominant factors governing detectability. Taking into account the expected frequency of planetary systems and the fraction of high-magnification events, we estimate that Roman will detect a high-magnification triple-lens event in approximately 4.5\% of multi-planet microlensing events, corresponding to about 64 events over the course of the full survey.