A New Method to Break the Central Perturbation Degeneracy in High Magnification Microlensing Events

Sean Terry  ✧  University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

I present Keck adaptive optics (AO) observations of the microlensing target OGLE-2011-BLG-0950, which enable the lens system to be directly detected. The initial analysis of Choi et al. (2012) resulted in two degeneracies resulting in four degenerate solutions. The lens system is a Jupiter mass ratio planetary system or a stellar binary, with close and wide versions in each case. This is a generic problem that plagues the interpretation of high magnification events that display a double cusp approach, and it can complicate the interpretation of exoplanet microlensing survey results. I present a new method to resolve such degeneracies. The lens detection and mass measurement analysis described in this work provides a pathway to resolve such degeneracies with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's Galactic Exoplanet Survey.