Predictions on the detection of the free-floating planet population with K2 and spitzer microlensing campaigns

Abstract

The K2’s Campaign 9 (K2C9) by the Kepler satellite for microlensing observations towards the Galactic bulge started on April 7, 2016, and is going to last for about three months. It offers the first chance to measure the masses of members of the large population of the isolated dark low-mass objects further away in our Galaxy, free-floating planets (FFPs). Intentionally, this observational period of K2 will overlap with that of the 2016 Spitzer follow-up microlensing project expected to start in June, 2016. Therefore, for the first time it is going to be possible to observe simultaneously the same microlensing events from a ground-based telescope and two satellites. This will help in removing the two-fold degeneracy of the impact parameter and in estimating the FFP mass, provided that the angular Einstein ring radius Θ_E is measured. In this paper we calculate the probability that a microlensing event is detectable by two or more telescopes and study how it depends on the mass function index of FFPs and the position of the observers on the orbit.