Four microlensing giant planets detected through signals produced by minor-image perturbations

Aims: We investigated the nature of the anomalies appearing in four microlensing events KMT-2020-BLG-0757, KMT-2022-BLG-0732, KMT-2022-BLG-1787, and KMT-2022-BLG-1852. The light curves of these events commonly exhibit initial bumps followed by subsequent troughs that extend across a substantial portion of the light curves.
Methods: We performed thorough modeling of the anomalies to elucidate their characteristics. Despite their prolonged durations, which differ from the usual brief anomalies observed in typical planetary events, our analysis revealed that each anomaly in these events originated from a planetary companion located within the Einstein ring of the primary star. It was found that the initial bump arouse when the source star crossed one of the planetary caustics, while the subsequent trough feature occurred as the source traversed the region of minor image perturbations lying between the pair of planetary caustics.
Results: The estimated masses of the host and planet, their mass ratios, and the distance to the discovered planetary systems are (M_host/M_⊙, M_planet/M_J, q/10⁻³, D_L/kpc) = (0.58_−0.30^+0.33, 10.71_−5.61^+6.17, 17.61 ± 2.25, 6.67_−1.30^+0.93) for KMT-2020-BLG-0757, (0.53_−0.31^+0.31, 1.12_−0.65^+0.65, 2.01 ± 0.07, 6.66_−1.84^+1.19) for KMT-2022-BLG-0732, (0.42_−0.23^+0.32, 6.64_−3.64^+4.98, 15.07 ± 0.86, 7.55_−1.30^+0.89) for KMT-2022-BLG-1787, and (0.32_−0.19^+0.34, 4.98_−2.94^+5.42, 8.74 ± 0.49, 6.27_−1.15^+0.90) for KMT-2022-BLG-1852. These parameters indicate that all the planets are giants with masses exceeding the mass of Jupiter in our solar system and the hosts are low-mass stars with masses substantially less massive than the Sun.