OGLE-2017-BLG-1434Lb: Eighth q < 1 * 10-4 Mass-Ratio Microlens Planet Confirms Turnover in Planet Mass-Ratio Function
Abstract
We report the discovery of a cold Super-Earth planet (mp=4.4 +/- 0.5 MEarth) orbiting a low-mass (M=0.23 +/- 0.03 MSun) M dwarf at projected separation aperp = 1.18 +/- 0.10 AU, i.e., about 1.9 times the snow line. The system is quite nearby for a microlensing planet, DLens = 0.86 +/- 0.09 kpc. Indeed, it was the large lens-source relative parallax pirel=1.0 mas (combined with the low mass M) that gave rise to the large, and thus well-measured, "microlens parallax" that enabled these precise measurements. OGLE-2017-BLG-1434Lb is the eighth microlensing planet with planet-host mass ratio q < 1 * 10-4. We apply a new planet-detection sensitivity method, which is a variant of "V/Vmax", to seven of these eight planets to derive the mass-ratio function in this regime. We find dN/d(ln q) ~ qp, with p = 1.05 (+0.78,-0.68), which confirms the "turnover" in the mass function found by Suzuki et al. relative to the power law of opposite sign n = -0.93 +/- 0.13 at higher mass ratios q >~ 2 * 10-4. We combine our result with that of Suzuki et al. to obtain p = 0.73 (+0.42,-0.34).