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Free-floating Planet Mass Function from MOA-II 9 yr Survey toward the Galactic Bulge

Authors :
Takahiro Sumi
Naoki Koshimoto
David P. Bennett
Nicholas J. Rattenbury
Fumio Abe
Richard Barry
Aparna Bhattacharya
Ian A. Bond
Hirosane Fujii
Akihiko Fukui
Ryusei Hamada
Yuki Hirao
Stela Ishitani Silva
Yoshitaka Itow
Rintaro Kirikawa
Iona Kondo
Yutaka Matsubara
Shota Miyazaki
Yasushi Muraki
Greg Olmschenk
Clément Ranc
Yuki Satoh
Daisuke Suzuki
Mio Tomoyoshi
Paul . J. Tristram
Aikaterini Vandorou
Hibiki Yama
Kansuke Yamashita
MOA Collaboration
Source :
The Astronomical Journal, Vol 166, Iss 3, p 108 (2023)
Publication Year :
2023
Publisher :
IOP Publishing, 2023.

Abstract

We present the first measurement of the mass function of free-floating planets (FFPs), or very wide orbit planets down to an Earth mass, from the MOA-II microlensing survey in 2006–2014. Six events are likely to be due to planets with Einstein radius crossing times t _E < 0.5 days, and the shortest has t _E = 0.057 ± 0.016 days and an angular Einstein radius of θ _E = 0.90 ± 0.14 μ as. We measure the detection efficiency depending on both t _E and θ _E with image-level simulations for the first time. These short events are well modeled by a power-law mass function, ${{dN}}_{4}/d\mathrm{log}M={({2.18}_{-1.40}^{+0.52})\times (M/8\,{M}_{\oplus })}^{-{\alpha }_{4}}$ dex ^−1 star ^−1 with ${\alpha }_{4}={0.96}_{-0.27}^{+0.47}$ for M / M _⊙ < 0.02. This implies a total of $f={21}_{-13}^{+23}$ FFPs or very wide orbit planets of mass 0.33 < M / M _⊕ < 6660 per star, with a total mass of ${80}_{-47}^{+73}{M}_{\oplus }$ star ^−1 . The number of FFPs is ${19}_{-13}^{+23}$ times the number of planets in wide orbits (beyond the snow line), while the total masses are of the same order. This suggests that the FFPs have been ejected from bound planetary systems that may have had an initial mass function with a power-law index of α ∼ 0.9, which would imply a total mass of ${171}_{-52}^{+80}{M}_{\oplus }$ star ^−1 . This model predicts that Roman Space Telescope will detect ${988}_{-566}^{+1848}$ FFPs with masses down to that of Mars (including ${575}_{-424}^{+1733}$ with 0.1 ≤ M / M _⊕ ≤ 1). The Sumi et al. large Jupiter-mass FFP population is excluded.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
15383881
Volume :
166
Issue :
3
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
The Astronomical Journal
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.800e59f2d06498984852c5b1ece5ac0
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ace688