The First Heroic Decade of Microlensing

Abstract

We review the fundamentals of vanilla and exotic microlensing. Deviations from the standard form of an achromatic, time-symmetric lightcurve can be caused by the parallax and xallarap effects, finite source size effects and binarity. The pioneering experiments of MACHO, EROS and OGLE reported first candidate events exactly ten years ago, so now is an opportune moment to summarise the achievements of the First Heroic Decade. Three applications are reviewed in detail -- namely (i) searches for compact dark objects in the Galactic halo, (ii) probes of the baryonic mass distribution in the inner Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy and (iii) studies of the limb darkening of source stars. Finally, we suggest four projects for the Second Heroic Decade -- (i) K band microlensing towards the Bulge, (ii) pixel lensing towards the low luminosity spiral galaxy M33, (iii) polarimetry of on-going microlensing events and (iv) astrometric microlensing with the GAIA satellite.