Cold and Possibly Unbound Planets from Wide-Field Microlensing Surveys

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The PI and his team will continue to search for new exoplanets using gravitational microlensing techniques in collaboration with an international network of observatories with wide-field telescopes. Microlensing is a phenomenon which can be used to detect a very faint object, such as planet, through the planet's gravitational bending of light of a background source. The investigators will conduct observations with an international network of professional and amateur observers. This work will have broad impact by involving researchers in different countries, by making progress in unifying the gravitational lensing community, working with amateur scientists at some of the telescopes, and public outreach efforts. The PI will also train a graduate student in this field. Microlensing has the potential to detect many new exoplanets with important demographics that are often missed with other techniques, such as finding planets at high separation from the host star, and free-floating planets, or those which do not appear to be gravitationally bound to any star.