Paper detail

Extended Source Effects in Astrometric Gravitational Microlensing

Extended source size effects have been detected in photometric monitoring of gravitational microlensing events. We study similar effects in the centroid motion of an extended source lensed by a point mass. We show that the centroid motion of a source with uniform surface brightness can be obtained analytically. For a source with circularly symmetric limb-darkening profile, the centroid motion can be expressed as a one-dimensional integral, which can be evaluated numerically. We found that when the impact parameter is comparable to the source radius, the centroid motion is significantly modified by the finite source size. In particular, when the impact parameter is smaller than the source radius, the trajectories become clover-leaf like. Such astrometric motions can be detected using space interferometers such as the Space Interferometry Mission. Such measurements offer exciting possibilities of determining stellar parameters such as stellar radius to excellent accuracy.