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Expectations from a Microlensing Search for Planets

The statistical distribution of the masses of planets about stars between the Sun and the center of the galaxy is constrained to within a factor of three by an intensive search for planets during microlensing events. Projected separations in terms of the lens Einstein ring radius yield a rough estimate of the distribution of planetary semimajor axes with planetary mass. The search consists of following ongoing stellar microlensing events involving sources in the center of the galaxy lensed by intervening stars with high time resolution, 1% photometry in two colors in an attempt to catch any short time scale planetary perturbations of the otherwise smooth light curve. It is assumed that 3000 events are followed over an 8 year period, but with half of the lenses, those that are members of binary systems, devoid of planets. The remaining 1500 lenses have solar-system-like distributions of 4 or 5 planets. The expectations from the microlensing search are extremely assumption dependent with 56, 138, and 81 planets being detected for three sets of assumptions involving how the planetary masses and separations vary with lens mass. The events can be covered from 54% to 62% of the time on average by high time resolution photometry from a system of three or four dedicated two meter telescopes distributed in longitude, so 38% to 46% of the detectable small mass planets (very short perturbations of the light curve) will be missed. But perturbations comparable to a day in length means all of the detectable Jupiters and Saturns will in fact be detected as well as a large fraction of the Uranuses. Although meaningful statistics on planetary masses and separations can be inferred from such an intensive search, they, like the inferred data set, will be dependent on the assumed nature of the systems.