Limits on the Abundance of Galactic Planets From 5 Years of PLANET Observations Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We search for signatures of planets in 43 intensively monitored microlensing events that were observed between 1995 and 1999. Planets would be expected to cause a short-duration (1 day) deviation on the smooth, symmetric light curve produced by a single lens. We find no such anomalies and infer that less than one-third of the 0.3 M stars that typically comprise the lens population have Jupiter mass companions with semimajor axes in the range of 1.5 AU < a < 4 AU. Since orbital periods of planets at these radii are 3-15 yr, the outer portion of this region is currently difficult to probe with any other technique.

published proceedings

  • The Astrophysical Journal

author list (cited authors)

  • Albrow, M. D., An, J., Beaulieu, J., Caldwell, J., DePoy, D. L., Dominik, M., ... (The PLANET Collaboration).

citation count

  • 56

complete list of authors

  • Albrow, MD||An, J||Beaulieu, J-P||Caldwell, JAR||DePoy, DL||Dominik, M||Gaudi, BS||Gould, A||Greenhill, J||Hill, K||Kane, S||Martin, R||Menzies, J||Naber, RM||Pel, J-W||Pogge, RW||Pollard, KR||Sackett, PD||Sahu, KC||Vermaak, P||Vreeswijk, PM||Watson, R||Williams, A

publication date

  • August 2001