DEPENDENCE OF THE SENSITIVITY TO PLANETS ON THE PROPERTIES OF HIGH-MAGNIFICATION GRAVITATIONAL MICROLENSING EVENTS

In current microlensing planet searches that are being carried out in a survey/follow-up mode, the most important targets for follow-up observations are lensing events with high magnifications resulting from the very close approach of background source stars to the lens. In this paper, we investigate the dependence of the sensitivity to planets on detailed properties of high-magnification events. From this, it is found that the sensitivity does not monotonically increase as the impact parameter between the lens and the source trajectory decreases. Instead, it is roughly the same for events with impact parameters less than a certain threshold value. It is also found that events involving main-sequence source stars are sensitive to planets in a much wider range of separation and mass ratio, than those events involved with giant source stars. Based on these results, we propose observational strategies for maximal planet detections considering the types of telescopes available for follow-up observations.