Polarimetric Microlensing of Circumstellar Disks

Polarimetric microlensing of circumstellar discs

Authors:

Sajadian et al

Abstract:

We study the benefits of polarimetry observations of microlensing events to detect and characterize circumstellar discs around the microlensed stars located at the Galactic bulge. These discs which are unresolvable from their host stars make a net polarization effect due to their projected elliptical shapes. Gravitational microlensing can magnify these signals and make them be resolved. The main aim of this work is to determine what extra information about these discs can be extracted from polarimetry observations of microlensing events in addition to those given by photometry ones. Hot discs which are closer to their host stars are more likely to be detected by microlensing, owing to more contributions in the total flux. By considering this kind of discs, we show that although the polarimetric efficiency for detecting discs is similar to the photometric observation, but polarimetry observations can help to constraint the disc geometrical parameters e.g. the disc inner radius and the lens trajectory with respect to the disc semimajor axis. On the other hand, the time-scale of polarimetric curves of these microlensing events generally increases while their photometric time-scale does not change. By performing a Monte Carlo simulation, we show that almost four optically thin discs around the Galactic bulge sources are detected (or even characterized) through photometry (or polarimetry) observations of high-magnification microlensing events during 10-yr monitoring of 150 million objects.