Astrometric Properties of Gravitational Binary-Microlens Events and Their Applications

Abstract

In this paper, we study the astrometric properties of gravitational microlensing events caused by binary lenses. By investigating the centroid shifts for various types of binary-lens events, we find that the deviations of the centroid shift trajectories from the elliptical ones of single-lens events are characterized by distortions, twistings, and big jumps. We study the conditions of binary-lens system configurations and source star trajectories for individual types of deviations. We find dramatic differences in the astrometric centroid shifts for binary-lens microlensing events that would be degenerate had their parameters been determined photometrically. Therefore, when additional astrometric observations of a binary-lens event are available, one can resolve the ambiguity of the binary-lens fit, and uniquely determine the binary-lens parameters.