ON THE FEASIBILITY OF CHARACTERIZING FREE-FLOATING PLANETS WITH CURRENT AND FUTURE SPACE-BASED MICROLENSING SURVEYS

Simultaneous space-and ground-based microlensing surveys, such as K2's Campaign 9 (K2C9) and WFIRST, facilitate measuring the masses and distances of free-floating planet (FFP) candidates, which are identified as single-lens events with timescales that are of the order of 1 day. Measuring the mass and distance of an FFP lens requires determining the size of the source star., measuring the microlens parallax pi(E), and using high-resolution imaging to search for the lens flux F-l from a possible host star. Here we investigate the accessible parameter space for each of these components considering different satellites for a range of FFP masses, Galactic distances, and source star properties. We find that at the beginning of K2C9, when its projected separation D-perpendicular to from the Earth is less than or similar to 0.2 au, it will be able to measure pE for Jupiter-mass FFP candidates at distances larger than similar to 2 kpc and to Earth-mass lenses at similar to 8 kpc. At the end of K2C9, when D-perpendicular to = 0.81 au, it is sensitive to planetary-mass lenses for distances greater than or similar to 3.5 kpc, and even then only to those with mass greater than or similar to M-Jup. From lens flux constraints we find that it will be possible to exclude hosts down to the deuterium-burning limit for events within similar to 2 kpc. This indicates that the ability to characterize FPs detected during K2C9 is optimized for events occurring toward the beginning of the campaign. WFIRST, on the other hand, will be able to detect and characterize FFP masses down to or below super-Earths throughout the Galaxy during its entire microlensing survey.