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# Electric field tunability of nuclear and electronic spin dynamics due to the hyperfine interaction in semiconductor nanostructures

## Abstract

We present formulas for the nuclear and electronic spin relaxation times due to the hyperfine interaction for nanostructed systems and show that the times depend on the square of the local density of electronic states at the nuclear position. A drastic sensitivity (orders of magnitude) of the electronic and nuclear spin coherence times to small electric fields is predicted for both uniformly distributed nuclear spins and for $`\delta `$-doped layers of specific nuclei. This sensitivity is robust to nuclear spin diffusion.

Traditional semiconductor electronic devices are based on precise control of the electronic charge distribution using electric fields, ignoring the spin degrees of freedom of the electrons. Similar control over an electron’s spin may lead to the development of new electronic devices with improved performance and new functionality.book ; wolf  Electronic spin coherence times exceed 100 ns at low temperatures in GaAs,om1  and nuclear spin coherence times can exceed 1 s in GaAs quantum wells (QW).berg ; NMR1 ; smet  Because of these long coherence times, nuclear spins are also candidates for spin-based devices.kane

A natural way to control both electronic and nuclear spins would rely on magnetic fields. However, high magnetic fields are difficult both to achieve and to change rapidly. Furthermore, detection of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals from samples of reduced dimensionality is limited by the low nuclear polarization achievable with standard techniques.NMR1  Studies in semiconductor quantum wells,NMR1 ; NMR2 ; harley ; salis1  show that a strong local magnetic field and high nuclear polarization emerge as a consequence of optically-induced dynamical nuclear polarization (DNP)over1  via the hyperfine interaction. Kawakami et al.,kawa1  have further demonstrated “imprinting” of nuclear spin polarization from adjacent ferromagnetic layers. Smet et al.,smet  have manipulated nuclear spins by electrically tuning the electron density in a QW across a Quantum Hall ferromagnet transition; the electric field tunes the nuclear spin relaxation time by changing the spectrum of collective mode excitations. Polarization of nuclei has also been predicted to alter electronic decoherence dynamics in quantum dots.loss  Hence, the electronic-nuclear spin interaction is of major interest, with implications for both electronic and nuclear spin lifetimes.over2

Here we derive general formulas applicable to nanostructures for the nuclear and electronic spin relaxation and decoherence times, $`T_1`$ and $`T_2`$, from the hyperfine interaction. The central physical quantity is the electronic local density of states (ELDOS) at the nuclei. We re-analyze the measurements of Ref. NMR1  using these formulas to obtain new values of the hyperfine coupling in GaAs QW’s. We predict that the dominant process for nuclear $`T_1`$ in these QW’s (and $`T_2`$ in others) can be tuned with an electric field by modifying the ELDOS at particular locations. For a parabolic QW electric-field tuning of nuclear spin relaxation by many orders of magnitude is possible, at temperatures considerably higher than in Ref. smet  and despite nuclear spin diffusion. The calculations of nuclear spin diffusion properly consider the ELDOS and inhomogeneous nuclear magnetization and indicate non-exponential long-time nuclear dynamics.

We assume nuclei are polarized through DNP and most of our calculations are performed at 30K, where DNP is very efficient with typical laboratory magnetic fields (although tunability of $`T_1`$ and $`T_2`$, in principle, extends to much higher temperatures). In GaAs QW’s the nuclear $`T_1`$ is dominated by the hyperfine interaction; however nuclear dipolar interactions limit $`T_2`$ to $`10^4`$ s. The electronic $`T_1`$ and $`T_2`$ in GaAs QW’s are dominated by other processes. Therefore our specific predictions focus on control of the nuclear $`T_1`$. The general equations, however, are valid for describing the tuning of nuclear $`T_2`$ and electronic $`T_1`$ and $`T_2`$ in situations where the hyperfine interaction dominates those times. At the end of this Letter we propose several such situations.

For GaAs QW’s we propose two different experimental configurations to demonstrate the electric field tunability of the nuclear $`T_1`$. The same approaches can be used to tune nuclear $`T_2`$ and electronic spin decoherence in other material systems. In the first configuration, the $`T_1`$ of Ga and As nuclei in the nanostructure depends on the occupancy of conduction subbands, decreasing stepwise as the number of occupied conduction subbands (and hence the density of states) increases. Manipulation of the QW density, and implicitly the number of occupied subbands, can be accomplished with a gate voltage, permitting the manipulation of $`T_1`$. In the second configuration, a single $`\delta `$-doped layer of a different material (such as In) is inserted at a specific position. The tunability of $`T_1`$ of these nuclei comes from the change in the electronic wave functions due to the applied electric field.

Our analysis of the electronic and nuclear spin relaxation times due to the hyperfine interaction in low dimensional systems follows in spirit the calculation by Overhauserover2  for bulk metals, but now includes new effects due to the nanostructure. The interaction Hamiltonian can be written as

$$H=\frac{8\pi }{3}\beta _e\beta _n\left(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_n\stackrel{}{\sigma }_e\right)\delta (𝐫𝐫_n),$$
(1)
where $`\beta _n`$ and $`\beta _e`$ are the nuclear and electron magnetic moments, and $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }_n`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }_e`$ are the Pauli spin operators for the nucleus and electron. The argument of the delta function, $`𝐫𝐫_n`$, represents the relative distance between the nuclear and electronic spins. The main effect of this Hamiltonian is a spin-flip process involving both the electronic and nuclear spins, which we evaluate using Fermi’s golden rule.

The time dependence of the electronic magnetization is

$$\frac{dD}{dt}=\frac{D_0D}{T_{1e}}+G\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mathrm{\Delta }}{T_{1n}},$$
(2)
where $`D`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ are the electronic and nuclear magnetization with $`D_0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ their equilibrium values, and $`G=2I(I+1)(2I+1)/3`$ ($`I`$ represents the nuclear spin magnetic number). The electronic ($`T_{1e}`$) and nuclear ($`T_{1n}`$) relaxation times for general nanostructures and weak spin polarization are thus

$$T_{1e}^1=\frac{1}{V}\underset{𝐫_n}{}\frac{1024\pi ^3\beta _e^2\beta _n^2𝑑\epsilon A_e^2(𝐫_n,\epsilon )f_{FD}^{}(\epsilon )}{9\mathrm{}(2I+1)𝑑𝐫𝑑\epsilon A_e(𝐫,\epsilon )f_{FD}^{}(\epsilon )}$$
(3)
and

$$T_{1n}^1(𝐫_n)=\frac{512\pi ^3\beta _e^2\beta _n^2k_BT𝑑\epsilon A_e^2(𝐫_n,\epsilon )f_{FD}^{}(\epsilon )}{3\mathrm{}I(I+1)(2I+1)},$$
(4)
where

$$A_e(𝐫_n,\epsilon )=\underset{m}{}|\psi _m(𝐫_n)|^2\delta (\epsilon E_m).$$
(5)
Here $`A_e(𝐫_n,\epsilon )`$ is the ELDOS ($`m`$ labels the state, and $`\psi _m(𝐫_n)`$ the electron wave function of that state at the nucleus), $`f_{FD}(\epsilon )`$ the Fermi-Dirac distribution function, and $`T`$ the temperature. If there is no energy bottleneck for the electron (e.g. there is none in QW’s), the transverse spin decoherence rate $`T_2^1`$ from this mechanism is equal to $`T_1^1`$. According to Eqs. (3)-(5), the electronic and nuclear spin relaxation times will depend on the position of the nuclei. $`T_{1e}`$ is temperature independent, suggesting that it is possible for the hyperfine interaction to dominate $`T_{1e}`$ at low temperatures, for the relaxation times corresponding to other electronic mechanisms increase as the temperature decreases.over2 ; opticalbook

For a QW the system’s dispersion relations are quasi-two-dimensional; therefore, the electronic wave functions can be written as a product between an envelope function, $`\varphi (z)`$, and a Bloch function, $`u(𝐫)`$, such that $`\psi _{j𝐊}(𝐫_n)=\mathrm{exp}[i𝐊𝐑]\varphi _j(z)u(𝐫_n)`$. For this situation $`A_e(𝐫_n,\epsilon )=_j|\varphi _j(𝐳_n)|^2N_{2D}\mathrm{\Theta }(\epsilon E_{j(𝐊=0)})`$, where $`N_{2D}`$ is the density of states for a two-dimensional electron gas and $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is the Heaviside step function. Available experimental data for the nuclear spin relaxation time of a GaAs/Al0.1Ga0.9As QW NMR1  allow us to extract the value of the conduction band Bloch function, $`|u(𝐫_n)|^2=5.2\times 10^{25}`$ cm-3. This value compares well with $`|u(𝐫_n)|^2=5.8\times 10^{25}`$ cm-3 extracted from bulk GaAs in Ref. paget1977 . $`\varphi _j(z)`$ is evaluated using a fourteen-band $`𝐤𝐩`$ calculation.thesis  We consider now two different systems: a square GaAs QW ($`L=75`$Å) confined within two barriers of Al0.4Ga0.6As and a parabolic AlxGa1-xAs QW ($`L=1000`$Å) confined within two barriers of Al0.4Ga0.6As. The parabolic QW is obtained by gradually varying the Al concentration, $`x`$, of AlxGa1-xAs layers from 0.4 in the two barriers to 0.07 in the center of the QW.

In Fig. 1 we present the position dependence of the relaxation times for the square GaAs (Fig. 1a) and parabolic AlxGa1-xAs (Fig. 1b) QW’s for different conduction band occupancy. The shape of the curves describing the $`T_{1n}(z)`$ are similar for the two considered situations. An initial nuclear polarization obtained by DNP will be inhomogeneous, and for short times will be proportional to $`T_{1n}^1(z)`$, so for one occupied subband the initial nuclear magnetization $`m(z,t=0)|\varphi (z)|^4`$. The initial $`T_{1n}`$ for the total Ga and As nuclear magnetization initialized this way is plotted in the insets of Fig. 1 as a function of electron density. Note that as the electron density in the QW increases, the number of occupied conduction subbands will increase, and as a consequence the $`T_{1n}`$ will decrease stepwise even for these uniformly distributed Ga and As nuclei. For the parabolic QW, where the energy difference between the minimum of two consecutive conduction subbands is about 15 meV, thermal smearing of the Fermi function at T=30K (solid line) will suppress the stepwise shape of the initial $`T_{1n}`$. However, at T=4K, where the Fermi function is sharper (dashed line), the stepwise dependence of the $`T_{1n}`$ is observable. Application of an electric field across a QW can also tilt the confining potential. The direct dependence of both electron and nuclear spin coherence and relaxation times on the electronic envelope function suggests that control of spin relaxation times can thus be achieved by using such an external electric field $`𝐄`$. Salis et al. salis2  suggested that the wavefunction shift with $`𝐄`$, and hence the electrical control of spin coherence, is particularly effective in a shallow parabolic QW.

We now consider the effects of shifting the electronic envelope wave functions to overlap different parts of the initial polarized nuclear population (different positions), and nuclear spin diffusion, by tracking the polarizations at the different positions as a function of time and then summing them to track the time dependence of the total nuclear polarization. For this and all subsequent calculations we consider electron densities where only the first subband is occupied. $`m(z,t)`$ can be obtained by solving

$$\frac{dm(z,t)}{dt}=D\frac{^2m(z,t)}{z^2}\frac{m(z,t)}{T_{1n}(z)},$$
(6)
where $`D`$ represents the diffusion constant, whose value is of the order of 103 A2/s for GaAs systems.paget  Our results indicate that the longer-time dynamics of the magnetization will be non-exponential.

In Fig. 2 we plot, for Ga and As nuclei which have been polarized via DNP at $`𝐄=0`$, the time dependence of the total QW’s nuclear magnetization for different values of the applied electric fields in the presence and the absence of spin diffusion. The inset shows the field dependence of the total initial nuclear spin relaxation time extracted as the first derivative of the magnetization at $`t=0`$ s. The diminished overlap of the electron envelope function with the region of polarized nuclei reduces the relaxation rates \[shown in Fig. 3(a) and (c)\]. Magnetization decay in the square QW (Fig 2a) is almost unaffected by the electric field, whereas for the parabolic QW (Fig. 2b) a large increase of the relaxation time is obtained even in small electric fields. In the presence of nuclear spin diffusion the effect of the electric field is reduced; in the parabolic QW, however, one can still see a significant difference between relaxation times at different applied electric fields. Recent measurements of nuclear spin diffusion in AlGaAs barriers indicated diffusion constants an order of magnitude smaller than in GaAs.harley2  This suggests the tunability in the parabolic QW may be even more robust to diffusion than shown in Fig. 2.

An even more precise level of electric field control is possible in structures which have been intentionally $`\delta `$-doped with a layer of different nuclei, such as In. For such a structure $`T_{1n}^1`$ depends on the position of the $`\delta `$-doped layer according to Fig. 3a, assuming the Bloch function on In is the same as that on Ga. Although $`T_{1n}`$ for this layer could vary considerably, in a GaAs host $`T_{2n}`$ would not because of transverse spin diffusion to or from the host nuclei. In Fig. 3b we plot the ratio of the spin relaxation times in the presence and absence of an applied electric field as a function of the position along the growth direction for the square QW. We can see that the effect of the electric field is strongest within the two barriers. The effect of the electric field is far greater for the parabolic QW; the spin relaxation times increase four orders of magnitude for an electric field as low as 10kV/cm (Fig. 3d), and this increase occurs in regions of large initial nuclear polarization. If the $`T_{1n}`$ from the hyperfine interaction is made sufficiently long, eventually the total $`T_{1n}`$ will come to be dominated by the $`10`$ min $`T_{1n}`$ timespinphonon  from spin-phonon interactions.

From Eqs. (3)-(5) and $`T_{1n}`$ from Ref. NMR1  we estimate the spin relaxation time via the hyperfine interaction for the electron in both the square and parabolic QW’s of Fig. 1. For both structures we obtain $`T_{1e}10^5`$s for a single occupied subband. For uniformly distributed nuclei the electric field dependence of $`T_{1e}`$ is small, except for the density dependence (which is the same as shown in the Fig. 1 inset for $`T_{1n}`$). The electronic relaxation time is $`T_{1e}10^7`$s from other processes; however if these other processes could be suppressed times of $`10^5`$s might be observable. The influence of a $`\delta `$-doped layer of nuclei on $`T_{1e}`$ could also be electric field tuned, with the same behavior as $`T_{1n}`$ in Fig. 3.

We conclude by describing how to reduce competing processes for both the nuclear and electron spin coherence times. We have considered In as the $`\delta `$-doped layer of nuclei in the GaAs QW. Although the different resonant frequency will limit the effect on the In $`T_{1n}`$ of spin diffusion to the Ga and As nuclei, the host nuclei could significantly reduce the $`T_{2n}`$ through dipole-dipole coupling. Another choice of QW, ZnCdSe/ZnSe, can be grown entirely from spin-0 nuclei, hence a $`\delta `$-doped Mn layer in this structure should have a $`T_{2n}`$ dominated by the tunable hyperfine interaction.

Electrons in either GaAs or ZnCdSe QW’s may have $`T_{1e}`$’s limited by spin-orbit interaction. Si QW’s in SiC (or SiO2)carrier , however, may have both spin-0 nuclei and weak spin-orbit interaction. Thin Si layers in these QW structure can have a direct gap, so these layers could be probed or pumped optically. The electron spin coherence times could then be dominated by interactions with the $`\delta `$-doped nuclei. In these QW’s a good choice for a $`\delta `$-doped nucleus the spin-1/2 Si nucleus.

We would like to acknowledge D. D. Awschalom, W. H. Lau, D. Loss, A.V. Khaetskii, J. M. Kikkawa and J. M. Tang for helpful discussions. Our work was supported by DARPA/ARO DAAD19-01-1-0490.


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# Angular Radii of Stars via Microlensing

## 1. Introduction

Although of fundamental importance to stellar astrophysics, precise measurements of angular radii are generically difficult to acquire routinely and in a model-independent way. Classical direct methods of measuring stellar radii include lunar occultations, interferometry, and eclipsing binaries. Lunar occultation measurements yield precise angular radii (see Richichi et al. 1999 and references therein), but the number of stars to which this technique can be applied is limited. The number of direct measurements using interferometers has recently increased dramatically with advent of, e.g. the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (van Belle et al. 1999a, Colavita et al. 1999), and the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (Armstrong et al. 1998, Nordgren et al. 1999), and is likely to continue to increase as more technologically advanced interferometers come online. Unfortunately, both lunar occultation and interferometric angular diameter measurements have traditionally been primarily limited to nearby, evolved stars. Angular radii of main-sequence stars can be determined using detached eclipsing binaries (i.e. Popper 1998), however the large amount of data (both photometric and spectroscopic) required to yield accurate radii determinations makes this method prohibitive. Thus, of the $`300`$ direct, precise angular diameter measurements compiled by van Belle (1999), the overwhelming majority, $`85\%`$, are of evolved stars. Finally, it will be difficult to acquire a large sample of angular radii determinations of stars with metallicity considerably smaller than solar using these methods, due to the paucity of metal-poor stars in the local neighborhood.

Here we present a method, based on a suggestion by Paczyński (1998), of measuring angular radii of stars that overcomes some of the difficulties inherent in the classical methods. This method employs the extraordinary angular resolution provided by caustics in gravitational microlensing events, and as such is yet another in the growing list of applications of microlensing to the study of stellar astrophysics (see Gould 2001 for a review). The original suggestion of Paczyński (1998) was to invert the method of Gould (1994) for measuring the relative source-lens proper motion $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ in microlensing events. If the lens transits the source in a microlensing event, precise photometry can be used to determine the time it takes for the lens to transit one source radius, $`t_{}=\theta _{}/\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$, where $`\theta _{}`$ is angular radius of the source. An estimate of $`\theta _{}`$, using an empirical color-surface brightness relation, together with a measurement of the flux of the source, can then be used to estimate $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$, which Gould (1994) argued could be used to constrain the location of the lens. However, as Paczyński (1998) pointed out, it is possible to independently measure the angular Einstein ring radius of the lens,

$$\theta _\mathrm{E}=\sqrt{\frac{4GM}{Dc^2}},$$
(1)
by making precise astrometric measurements of the centroid shift of the source during the microlensing event using, i.e., the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM).111http://sim.jpl.nasa.gov Here $`M`$ is the mass of the lens, $`D`$ is defined by, $`DD_{\mathrm{os}}D_{\mathrm{ol}}/D_{\mathrm{ls}}`$, and $`D_{\mathrm{os}}`$, $`D_{\mathrm{ol}}`$, and $`D_{\mathrm{ls}}`$ are the distances between the observer-source, observer-lens, and lens-source, respectively. Since $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}=\theta _\mathrm{E}/t_\mathrm{E}`$, by combining the measurement of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ with the Einstein timescale $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ of the event determined from the light curve, it is possible to measure $`\theta _{}`$ for the source stars of microlensing events. We show that, with reasonable expenditure of resources, it should be possible to measure angular radii of a significant sample ($`80`$) of giant stars in the bulge to an accuracy of $`5\%`$, or $`7`$ main-sequence stars to an accuracy of $`15\%`$. Limb-darkening determinations should also be possible for the majority of the sources, and most will be relatively metal poor as compared to those for which angular radii determinations are currently available.

Although measurements of $`\theta _{}`$ can be made using single-lens events, in §2 we argue that this method is better suited to caustic-crossing binary-lens events, which are more common, easier to plan for, and considerably less resource-intensive than source-crossing single-lens events. We describe in some detail the basic method of measuring $`\theta _{}`$ for the source stars of caustic-crossing binary-lens events in §3, including a discussion of the expected errors on the individual parameters that enter into the measurement. We discuss various subtleties, complications, and extensions to the method in §4, and also present an estimate of the number of $`\theta _{}`$ measurements that might be made in this way. Finally, we summarize and conclude in §5.

## 2. Binary versus Single Lens Events

The primary requirement to be able to measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ in a microlensing event is that the source should be resolved by the gravitational lens. This effectively means that the source must cross a caustic in the source plane. Caustics are the set of positions in the source plane where the determinant of the Jacobian of the lens mapping from source to lens plane vanishes, and where the magnification therefore is formally infinite. Large gradients (with respect to source position) in the magnification exist near caustics, enabling the resolution of the source. Generically, microlenses come in two classes: single and binary lenses. Here ‘binary lens’ means a lens systems composed of two masses with angular separation of order the angular Einstein ring radius of the system. Very close and very wide binaries act essentially as single lenses. Single lenses have a caustic that consists of a single point at the position of the lens. In these cases, the magnification close to the caustic diverges as the inverse of the distance to the caustic. In contrast, the caustics of binary lenses are extended, and can cover a significant fraction of the Einstein ring. The caustics of binary lenses generically consist of two types of singularities, folds and cusps.222For binary-lenses, higher-order, beak-to-beak singularities can exist for specific combinations of the binary-lens mass ratio and angular separation in units of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. However, folds and cusps are the only stable singularities of any lens system (Petters, Levine, & Wambsganss 2000). Beak-to-beak singularities are unstable in the sense that, for infinitesimally small variations in the lens parameters, a beak-to-beak singularity disintegrates into two cusp-type singularities. Thus the set of parameters where beak-to-beak singularities are expected is formally sparse, and practically small. Interestingly, Alcock et al. (2000a) suggested that an observed event may have been due to a source crossing a beak-to-beak singularity in a binary-lens, although Alcock et al. (2000b) seem to favor the interpretation that this event is due to a background supernova. Near a fold, the caustic is well-described by generic linear fold singularities, for which the magnification locally diverges inversely as the square-root of the distance to the caustic (Schneider & Weiss 1986, Schneider, Ehlers, & Falco 1992, Gaudi & Petters 2002a). Cusps are points where two fold caustics meet, and the magnification for cusps locally diverges roughly inversely as the distance to the cusp point, similar to the magnification pattern near the point caustic of a single lens (Schneider & Weiss 1992, Schneider, Ehlers, & Falco 1992, Gaudi & Petters 2002b). The fact that the magnification near the point caustic of a single lens or near a cusp diverges inversely as the distance to the singularity, rather than as the square root of the distance to the singularity as with folds, means that for a given source size, the ‘resolving power’ of fold caustic crossings is less than single lens or cusp crossings.

Although single-lens events are more well suited to studies of stellar atmospheres, they are much less useful for measuring the sizes of stars for three main reasons. They are generally rarer than fold caustic crossings, their crossings cannot be predicted in advance, and their centroid motion is more difficult to measure.

Caustic-crossing binaries comprise roughly $`f_{cc}=7\%`$ of all events toward the Galactic bulge (Alcock et al. 2000a; Udalski et al. 2000). Of the remaining $`1f_{cc}`$ events, which we will conservatively assume due to single lenses, only a fraction $`\theta _{}/\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ will exhibit caustic crossings. Therefore, the expected ratio of binary-to-single events for which the source is resolved (and thus measurement of $`\theta _{}`$ is possible) is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{b/s}\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}}{\theta _{}}\frac{f_{cc}}{1f_{cc}}4\left(\frac{R_{}}{10R_{}}\right)^1,$$
(2)
where $`R_{}`$ is the physical radius of the source, and we adopted $`D_{\mathrm{ol}}=6\mathrm{kpc}`$, $`D_{\mathrm{os}}=8\mathrm{kpc}`$, and $`M=0.3M_{}`$ for the scaling relation on the extreme right hand side. Although not overwhelming for giant sources, for main sequence sources we expect at least an order of magnitude more binary lensing events for which the source is resolved. The ratio of the number of fold-to-cusp crossings is roughly

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{f/c}\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}}{\theta _{}}N_{cusp}^155N_{cusp}^1\left(\frac{R_{}}{10R_{}}\right)^1,$$
(3)
where $`N_{cusp}`$ is the number of cusps, which is either 6, 8, or 10 for a binary lens, depending primarily on $`d`$. Thus the overwhelming majority of events for which it will be possible to measure $`\theta _{}`$ will be fold caustic crossing binary-lens events.

Binary-lens fold caustic-crossing events also have the advantage that the second caustic crossing can be predicted in advance. This is because fold caustic crossings always come in pairs, and it is typically easy to tell, even with sparse sampling, that the first caustic crossing has occurred. Then more frequent sampling can be used to monitor the rise to the second caustic, in principle enabling the prediction of the time of the second crossing a day or more in advance (Jaroszyński & Mao 2001), and allowing the marshaling of the resources necessary to obtain the dense coverage of the second crossing needed to measure the crossing time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ of the source (see §3.1). In contrast, a single lens caustic crossing can only reliably be ‘predicted’ at about the time it begins.

Finally, it is considerably harder to measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ for caustic-crossing single-lens events than binary-lensing events. Single lens events have a maximum absolute centroid shift relative to the unlensed source position of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}/8^{1/2}`$, whereas binary lensing events can exhibit large variations of size $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ or more when the source crosses the caustic (Han, Chung, & Chang 1999). Therefore considerably more time will generally be required to determine $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ to given accuracy for single-lens events than for binary-lens events. Since the astrometric measurements essentially require the capabilities of SIM (or some similarly precious instrument), it is highly desirable to minimize the amount of time spent on this step.

Given the above arguments, we conclude that fold caustic crossing binary lensing events are the most suitable for use in routinely measuring $`\theta _{}`$. We will therefore focus on this case for the remainder of the discussion, however we will briefly revisit single-lens and cusp-crossing events in §4.1.

## 3. The Method

Consider a binary-lens event in which the source crosses a simple linear caustic.333A caustic can generally be approximated as a simple linear fold when the curvature of the caustic is everywhere small on angular scales of $`𝒪(\theta _{})`$, and when the angle of incidence of the source trajectory to the caustic is not small. This approximation will break down when the source is large compared to the overall size of the caustic, when the source crosses near a cusp, or when the source ‘straddles’ the caustic for a long time due to a small incidence angle. Although it will still be possible to measure $`\theta _{}`$ for such events, the relation between the observables and $`\theta _{}`$ is less straightforward. We discuss such cases in §4.1. Defining $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ as the (one-half) the time it takes for the source to completely traverse the caustic, and $`\varphi `$ as the angle between the source trajectory and the tangent to the caustic at the crossing point, then the time for the lens to cross the angular radius of the source is $`t_{}=\mathrm{\Delta }t\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$. However, we also have that $`t_{}=\theta _{}/\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$, where again $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is the relative source-lens proper motion. Combining these expressions, we have that $`\theta _{}=\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}\mathrm{\Delta }t\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$. Using the definition of $`\mu _{\mathrm{rel}}`$, we can write the angular source radius $`\theta _{}`$ as the following function of observables,

$$\theta _{}=\theta _\mathrm{E}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }t}{t_\mathrm{E}}\mathrm{sin}\varphi .$$
(4)
The process of $`\theta _{}`$ measurement can therefore be subdivided into three basic steps:

Measurement of the caustic crossing timescale $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ from a single photometrically well-resolved caustic crossing.

Measurement of the angle $`\varphi `$ and timescale $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ from the global fit to the binary-lens light curve.

Measurement of the angular Einstein ring radius $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ using precise astrometric measurements of the source centroid.

Each of these steps are illustrated schematically in Figure 1.

In the following subsections, we consider each of these steps in more detail. We outline the basic requirements for the measurement of each of the four parameters ($`\mathrm{\Delta }t,\varphi ,t_\mathrm{E}`$, and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$), and the expected accuracy with which each can be determined assuming reasonable expenditure of observing resources.

### 3.1. Measuring $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$

When the source is interior to a binary-lens caustic, five images are created. As the source approaches a fold caustic, two of these images brighten and merge in a characteristic way, and eventually disappear when the source completely exits the caustic. In contrast to the significant brightening of the two images associated with the fold, the remaining three images generally vary only slowly over the timescale of the crossing. All fold caustics locally have this generic behavior, and the magnification $`A(t)`$ of the source near a caustic crossing as a function of time is typically well-fitted by the functional form (Albrow et al. 1999b),

$$A(t)=\left(\frac{t_r}{\mathrm{\Delta }t}\right)G_0\left(\frac{tt_{cc}}{\mathrm{\Delta }t}\right)+A_{cc}+\omega (tt_{cc}),$$
(5)
where $`t_r`$ is the effective rise time of the caustic, which is related to the local derivatives of the lens mapping (Petters et al. 2001, Gaudi & Petters 2002), $`t_{cc}`$ is the time when the center of the source crosses the caustic, $`A_{cc}`$ is the magnification of all the images unrelated to the fold caustic at $`t=t_{cc}`$, $`\omega `$ is the slope of the magnification of these images as a function of time, and $`G_0(x)`$ can be expressed in terms of complete elliptic integrals of the first and second kind (Schneider & Weiss 1987). Note that equation (5) is only formally appropriate for a simple linear fold caustic. Thus, for a well-sampled fold caustic crossing, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ can be determined essentially independently of the global geometry of the event, and indeed without reference to the photometric data away from the crossing itself. In practice, the magnification is not directly observable, but rather the flux $`F(t)`$ as a function of time. The form for $`F(t)`$ takes on a similar form as equation (5), but with a slightly different parameterization (see Albrow et al. 1999b).

Equation (5) assumes a uniform source. This will likely be a poor approximation in optical bands, and assuming uniform source in the presence of limb-darkening may result in a systematic underestimate of $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, and therefore $`\theta _{}`$ since, the effect of limb-darkening can partially compensated for by a smaller (dimensionless) source size, at least for poorly-sampled light curves. However, for well-sampled caustic crossings and $`1\%`$ photometric accuracy, it should generally be possible to accurately measure both the source size and limb-darkening coefficient(s) (Rhie & Bennett 1999). Such data quality is readily achievable; indeed, independent limb-darkening and (dimensionless) source size measurements have been made for the source stars of at least five microlensing events (Albrow et al. 1999a, Afonso et al. 2000, Albrow et al. 2000, Albrow et al. 2001, An et al. 2002). A generalized form of equation (5) that includes simple limb-darkening can be found in Albrow et al. (1999b) and Afonso et al. (2001).

By fitting equation (5) (or a generalized form of it) to the light curve near a well-sampled fold caustic crossing, one can derive the parameters $`t_r,t_{cc},A_{cc},\omega `$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. The parameters $`t_{cc},A_{cc}`$, and $`t_r`$ can subsequently be used to constrain the global solution to the entire light curve (see Albrow et al. 1999b). However, of primary interest here is the parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, whose value is essentially independent of the global solution. See Figure 1(b). This means that $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ and the parameters determined from the global solution, $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$, will be essentially uncorrelated.

In order to be able to determine $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ from the caustic crossing data alone, the caustic crossing must be well-sampled, so that the parameters in equation (5) be well-constrained. Practically, this requires forewarning of the caustic crossing. Fortunately, this is generally possible with only photometry available from the collaborations which survey the Galactic bulge and find the alert the microlensing events real-time (EROS, Afonso et al. 2001; MOA, Bond et al. 2001; OGLE, Udalski et al. 2000, Woziak et al. 2001), although improved predictions would be possible with continuous photometry (Jaroszyński & Mao 2001). Thus no additional resources need to be invested to predict caustic crossings. However, as we discuss in §3.2, some additional sampling of the overall light curve may be needed to constrain $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$ and determine a unique global solution.

The accuracy with which $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ can be determined for a given caustic crossing will depend not only on the intrinsic parameters of the caustic crossing, but also on the sampling rate and photometric accuracy near the caustic crossing, which in turn will depend on weather, blending, etc., which tend to vary in a stochastic manner. Therefore it is not very useful to attempt to quantify the expected errors on $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ for an idealized observing setup. However we can obtain an order-of-magnitude estimate for $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}`$ by examining measurements of $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ from published analyses of observed caustic-crossing events. We discuss these determinations more thoroughly in §3.4. Typically, well-covered caustic crossings yield fractional errors of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}/\mathrm{\Delta }t1\%`$.

### 3.2. Measuring $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$

The parameters $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$ are determined from the global solution to the overall geometry of the binary-lens light curve. The relationship between the salient features of an observed light curve, and the canonical parameters of a binary-lensing event, are generally not obvious or straightforward. This fact generally makes fitting an observed light curve, and thus inferring the parameters $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$, quite difficult (see Albrow et al. 1999b for a thorough discussion). Although many methods have been proposed to overcome these difficulties, the lack of obvious correspondence between these parameters of interest and the light curve morphology generally implies that it is difficult to make general statements about the kinds of observations that are needed to reliably measure $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$. However, we can make some generic comments. For caustic-crossing binary lenses, one potential observable is the time $`\delta t_{cc}`$ between caustic crossings. Between caustic crossings, the magnification is typically considerably larger than outside the caustic, and therefore even with sparse ($`1`$ day) sampling, it should be possible to determine to reasonable precision the time of the first caustic crossing, provided that data exist before the first crossing. The requisite photometry will generally be acquired by the survey collaboration(s). Once the binary-lens event is alerted, more frequent photometry can be acquired by follow-up collaborations (PLANET, Albrow et al. 1998; MPS, Rhie et al. 2000), thus mapping the “U”-shaped curve between the caustic crossings. This shape, combined with information from cusp-approaches (or lack thereof) just outside the caustic, provides information about the shape of the caustic and the trajectory of the source through it. From this, the angle $`\varphi `$ of the trajectory with respect to the caustic can be derived, and also the distance $`d_{cc}`$ between the caustic crossings in units of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. Then, the timescale is given by $`t_\mathrm{E}=t_{cc}/d_{cc}`$.

Although the above analysis is highly trivialized, it does suggest that the following steps should be taken to ensure an accurate measurement of $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$. First, it is important to constrain the time of both caustic crossings to reasonable precision. This means that the survey collaborations should sample on timescales no less than a few days. Second, followup photometry should be initiated relatively soon after the first crossing, to measure the shape of the intra-caustic light curve reasonably well. This is also necessary in order to predict the second caustic crossing (Jaroszyński & Mao 2001). Furthermore, the follow-up photometry should continue past the second caustic crossing, to detect cusp-approaches or cusp-crossings (or the lack thereof).

Due to the difficulties inherent in fitting binary-lens light curves, it would be extremely difficult to attempt to predict the expected errors on $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$ for a hypothetical observing scenario. Furthermore, due to the complicated relation between observables and parameters implies that these errors are likely to depend strongly on the geometry of the event and light curve coverage, and therefore such ‘predictions’ would not be very useful. However, we would like to have an order-of-magnitude estimate for the expected errors given reasonable light curve coverage. From determinations of these parameters in published caustic-crossing events, we can expect fractional accuracies of a few percent, provided that the light curve is well-covered, in the sense outlined above. However, if the light curve coverage is incomplete, then errors of $`20\%`$ are expected. See §3.4.

### 3.3. Measuring $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$

A global solution to the entire light curve effectively requires the specification of the vector position of the source $`𝒖(t)`$ as a function of time in units of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, and the topology of the lens, i.e. the mass ratio $`q`$ and projected separation $`d`$ in units of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. These parameters yield not only the total magnification $`A`$ of all the images as a function of time. but also the individual image positions $`𝝋_i`$ and magnifications $`A_i`$ as a function of time, Therefore, it is also possible to predict the centroid $`𝝋_{cl}`$ of all the individual microimages,

$$𝝋_{cl}=\frac{_iA_i𝝋_i}{A}.$$
(6)
Note that $`𝝋_{cl}`$ is the centroid shift with respect to the lens position. Is it customary to consider the centroid shift with respect to the unlensed source position, $`\delta 𝝋_{cl}𝝋_{cl}𝒖`$. The unlensed source position $`𝒖`$, which is comprised of the parallax and proper motion of the source in some astrometric frame, can be determined via measurements of the unlensed motion of the source. Since the astrometric effects falls off very slowly (as $`u^1`$), these must be obtained many $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ after the event is over. In fact, such measurements are not strictly needed in order to measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ (but may be desirable for other reasons, see §4.3). Rather, one can simultaneously fit astrometric measurements during the course of the event for the relative position and proper motion of the source (in order to establish a local astrometric reference frame), and the offset induced by microlensing.

The centroid shift $`𝝋_{cl}`$ is in units of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, and its components are oriented with respect to the projected binary-lens axis, whose orientation $`\alpha `$ on the sky is unknown. The observable centroid is

$$𝜽_{cl}(t)\theta _\mathrm{E}\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\alpha & \mathrm{sin}\alpha \\ & \\ \mathrm{sin}\alpha & \mathrm{cos}\alpha \end{array}\right)𝝋_{cl}(t).$$
(7)
Alternatively, one can combine $`\alpha `$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and simply consider the vector $`𝜽_\mathrm{E}`$. Thus the global solution to the photometric light curve yields not only $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$, but also yields a prediction for the astrometric curve, up to an unknown orientation and scale $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$.444Technically, this is only true for an astrometric observer that is spatially coincident with the photometric observer. This will not be true for astrometric observations with SIM which will be in an Earth-trailing orbit. We discuss this complication in §4.2.2. Therefore, by making a series of astrometric measurements $`𝜽_{cl}(t)`$ at several different times during the course of the event, one can determine $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\alpha `$ via equation (7), and using the predictions for $`𝝋_{cl}(t)`$ from the photometric solution.

The accuracy with which $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ can determined will depend on the geometry of the event, the time of the astrometric measurements, and the time span between the measurements. Furthermore, as we discuss, there are, in reality,

FIG. 2.– The cumulative distribution of expected errors in $`\theta _E`$ in a Monte Carlo simulation, assuming a contribution of blended light of $`0\%`$ (no blending, solid), $`1\%`$ (dotted), $`10\%`$ (long dashed), and $`90\%`$ (dot-dashed). See text.
additional parameters that must be determined from the astrometric data. We therefore perform a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the accuracy with which $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ can be recovered. We explore whether the various parameters can be measured independently, or are degenerate with the measurement of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, and study the range of fractional uncertainties in measuring $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ for a full ensemble of binary lenses.

Our simulation consists of the following elements: a Galactic model and model of the ensemble of lenses to generate an ensemble of microlensing events, an observational strategy, and a fit of these observations to a set of parameters including $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$.

Our ensemble of lenses is identical to that of Graff & Gould (2002). Briefly, we draw sources and lenses from self-lensing isothermal sphere 8 kpc from the observer, and with two-dimensional velocity dispersion of $`220\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Both masses in the binary lens are chosen from the remnant mass function of Gould (2000). We pick a flat distribution in $`\mathrm{log}(d)`$, the logarithm of the dimensionless binary separation. The path of the source through the lens geometry is chosen randomly with a uniform distribution of angular impact parameter $`b\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, and we only consider paths that cross caustics.555In contrast to the usual technique for single lenses in which events are chosen from a uniform distribution in $`b`$, but are weighted towards large $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ events by multiplying the mass function by $`M^{1/2}`$.

As discussed in Graff & Gould (2002), in this ensemble of events there are many more events with a short time between caustic crossings, the caustic interior time $`t_{\mathrm{int}}`$, than is observationally detected by the MACHO and OGLE observing groups. This led these authors to suggest that most events with a short caustic interior time are not detected as caustic crossing binaries, and to define a caustic crossing detection efficiency $`_b(t_{\mathrm{int}})`$ akin to the standard single lens detection efficiency $`_s(t_\mathrm{E})`$.

The observational strategy is relatively unimportant, as long as there are astrometric measurement on either side of a caustic. Although it is conceivable that observations might be scheduled at particularly favorable times, such as times of maximum magnification or maximum displacement of the image centroid, it is likely that the telescope measuring the astrometric displacement will be oversubscribed. A simpler strategy would be to schedule periodic observations in advance. We have assumed that observations will be made every four days, with a 24 hour delay after the event is recognized as a caustic crossing binary, i.e., after the first caustic crossing. That is, the first observation comes $`15`$ days after the first caustic crossing. We assume observations are made for a total of 36 days, which corresponds to approximately $`2t_\mathrm{E}`$ for the median event timescale. Practically, observations should continue until after the second caustic crossing, and the total number of observations should be at least as large as the number of parameters to be constrained.

As we discuss in §3.4 (see also Table 1), well covered binary lenses can be fit photometrically with small errors on the parameters. Thus, we have assumed that all the parameters which can be fit from a single photometric telescope are determined.

Given a binary microlensing event from our ensemble, we use our observational strategy to create a series of photometric and astrometric measurements, respectively $`A(t)`$ and $`𝜽_{cl}(t)`$ which we can combine into a single list of measurements $`M_k`$ each with uncertainty $`\sigma _k`$. Using the Fisher matrix technique, e.g., Gould & Welch (1996), we determine the covariance matrix $`c_{ij}`$ of the errors

$$cb^1,b_{ij}=\underset{k}{}\sigma _k^2\frac{M_k}{a_i}\frac{M_k}{a_j}.$$
(8)
Here the $`a_i`$ are the various parameters being fit. The error in parameter $`a_i`$ is simply $`\sigma _{a_i}=\sqrt{c_{ii}}`$.

We assumed that the photometric uncertainty, $`\sigma _k`$, of the interferometric telescope, is photon-noise-dominated, and that the total telescope time, aperture, efficiency, filter width, and source brightness are such that a total of $`N=60,000`$ photons would be detected from an unmagnified source for a total photometric signal to noise of 250.666Note that a telescope with an overall efficiency of $`30\%`$ and diameter $`A_T`$ collects $`100(A_T/1\mathrm{m})^2`$ photons per second at $`I=18`$. We assume that the fractional photometric accuracy is simply $`N^{1/2}`$, and that the astrometric uncertainty is $`\sigma _\theta =N^{1/2}\theta _f`$, where $`\theta _f`$ is the width of the point spread function, or in the case of an interferometer, the fringe separation. Here we have assumed $`\theta _f=2.5`$mas. It is trivial to scale our results to brighter sources or larger telescopes: the fractional uncertainty in $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ is simply proportional to $`N^{1/2}`$.

We always fit for the four parameters required to establish a local astrometric frame, and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\alpha `$, the size scale and orientation of the microlensing excursion. We also assumed that the satellite which measures the astrometric motion is 0.2 AU from the (ground based) photometric measurements which fix the lens parameters. Thus, we can simultaneously fit for $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$, the projected Einstein ring radius, in the manner of Graff & Gould (2002). In addition to this basic fit, we also considered blending from luminous lenses and binary sources, which requires several additional parameters. We discuss parallax and blending in §§4.2.2 and 4.2.3, respectively.

Our basic results are summarized in the leftmost curve in Figure 2. We see that in the absence of blending, $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ can be determined with $`<10\%`$ uncertainty in 85% of events. The median error is $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}2.4\%`$. This is comparable to the uncertainty found by Gould & Salim (1999) for single star events, but with 50 times as many photons as we have assumed here. Thus, it is much easier to measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ for caustic crossing binary lenses than for single lenses.

### 3.4. Expected Fractional Errors on $`\theta _{}`$

From the expression for $`\theta _{}`$ (Eq. 4), and assuming the errors in $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, $`t_\mathrm{E}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, and $`\varphi `$ are small and uncorrelated, the fractional error in $`\theta _{}`$ is given by,

$$\frac{\sigma _\theta _{}}{\theta _{}}=\left[\left(\frac{\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}}{\theta _\mathrm{E}}\right)^2+\left(\frac{\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}}{t_\mathrm{E}}\right)^2+\left(\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}}{\mathrm{\Delta }t}\right)^2+\sigma _\varphi ^2\mathrm{cot}^2\varphi \right]^{1/2}$$
(9)
where $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}`$, $`\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}`$, and $`\sigma _\varphi `$ are the uncertainties in $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, $`t_\mathrm{E}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ and $`\varphi `$, respectively, and $`\sigma _\varphi `$ is in radians.

To date, there exist in the published literature 10 microlensing events for which the source star was well-resolved. Unfortunately, for four of the events, those presented in Alcock et al. (2000a), no estimate of the errors of the derived parameters is given. We therefore cannot use these events to explore the expected magnitudes of $`\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}`$, and $`\sigma _\varphi `$.

For the six events for which errors on the relevant fit parameters were given or derivable, only two of them are generic binary-lens fold caustic crossing events. The errors $`\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}`$, and $`\sigma _\varphi `$ for these two events, MACHO 98-SMC-1 and OGLE-1999-BUL-23, are presented in Table 1. For MACHO 98-SMC-1, these errors have been determined from the ensemble of solutions presented in Albrow et al. (1999b), which were fits to the PLANET collaboration photometry, which only covered the last half of the event, whereas the analysis of the combined photometry of the EROS, MACHO, MPS, OGLE, and PLANET collaborations (Afonso et al. 2000) yields considerably smaller errors. We concentrate on the results of Albrow et al. (1999b) here in order to demonstrate the kinds of errors that result from incomplete light curve coverage. Note that $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}1\%`$, which is not surprising, since the accuracy with which $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ can be determined depends almost exclusively on the photometric coverage near the caustic crossing. However, the errors on the global parameters $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\varphi `$ are quite large, $`\sigma _{t_\mathrm{E}}20\%`$ and $`\sigma _\varphi 30\%`$. This is due to the fact that the PLANET photometry only covered the latter half of the event, and contained no data prior to or during the first caustic crossing. Therefore the global geometry was quite poorly constrained with their data alone. Such incomplete coverage would clearly jeopardize a precise measurement of $`\theta _{}`$. This is in contrast to OGLE-1999-BUL-23, for which both PLANET and OGLE obtained data before the first caustic crossing. In this case, it was possible to measure $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, $`t_\mathrm{E}`$, and $`\varphi `$ to better than $`1\%`$ (Albrow et al. 2001a).

The remaining four include a single lens event (MACHO 95-BLG-30; Alcock et al. 1997), a binary-lens event in which the source crossed a cusp (MACHO 97-BLG-28; Albrow et al. 1999a), a binary-lens event in which the rotation of the binary was detected (MACHO 97-BLG-41; Albrow et al. 2000), and a binary-lens event for which both rotation and parallax effects were detected (EROS BLG-2000-5; An et al. 2002). In general, the previous discussion is not directly applicable to these events, as the information in the light curves is not easily decomposed into the parameters $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, $`\varphi `$ and $`t_\mathrm{E}`$. Nevertheless, in all four cases the dimensionless source size $`\rho _{}\theta _{}/\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ was determined. In three of the cases, $`\delta \rho _{}/\rho _{}1\%`$. In one case, MACHO 97-BLG-41, $`\delta \rho _{}/\rho _{}5\%`$ , due primarily to the fact that there exists only a handful of data points in which the source was resolved. Thus, although it is difficult to draw any general conclusions from these unique events, it is does seem likely that errors of $`1\%`$ are achievable for most types of events in which the source is resolved.

Also presented in Table 1 are the determined values of the $`I`$-magnitude of the source, for all six events. At $`I22`$, the source star for MACHO 98-SMC-1 would be too faint to target with most upcoming interferometers, including SIM. The other events are primarily bulge clump giants ($`I15`$), for which accuracies of $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}5\%`$ should be achievable with a reasonable amount of exposure time with upcoming interferometers, and in particular with $`8`$ minutes of SIM time (see §4.5 for a estimate of the required exposure times for SIM). In these cases, the expected error on $`\theta _{}`$ is typically dominated by $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}`$, and therefore we can expect $`\sigma _\theta _{}/\theta _{}\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}5\%`$. The source of OGLE-1999-BUL-23 is G/K subgiant ($`R_{}3R_{}`$), and thus dimmer. The time required to achieve an accuracy of $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}5\%`$ will be larger by a factor of $`16`$, or $`2\mathrm{hr}`$ for SIM.

## 4. Discussion

Our goal in §3 was to capture the essence of the method of measuring $`\theta _{}`$, and the discussions were therefore somewhat oversimplified, and glossed over several important points. In particular, we concentrated on fold caustic crossing binary-lens events toward the bulge, whereas measurements of $`\theta _{}`$ should be possible in other, rarer, types of events, such as cusp-crossings and single-lens events, and possibly events toward the Magellanic Clouds. We also ignored various higher-order effects which could, in principle, complicate the measurements. We therefore briefly discuss some of these complications and extensions. We also discuss the prospects for measuring the spectral type of the source, and also its distance, in order to convert from angular radius $`\theta _{}`$ to physical radius $`R_{}`$. Finally, we present an example observing campaign aimed at measuring angular radii for a significant sample of sources, outlining the resources required, and estimating the number of $`\theta _{}`$ measurements that might be made per year for such a campaign.

### 4.1. Single-lens, Cusp-crossing, and Magellanic Cloud Events

Although we have focussed on fold caustic-crossing binary-lens events toward the bulge, it is important to emphasize that $`\theta _{}`$ can, in principle, be measured for other types of caustic-crossing events such as cusp-crossing events, single-lens events, and all types of caustic-crossing events toward the Magellanic clouds. Indeed, in §3.4 we discussed examples in the literature of a single-lens and two cusp-crossing events for which a $`5\%`$ measurement of $`\theta _{}`$ would have been feasible.

In general, isolated cusp crossings, such as in MACHO 98-BLG-28, cannot be predicted in advance, and thus planning for such events is difficult, if not impossible. However, one will still have some advance warning of those cusp events which occur just after or in place of second fold caustic crossings. For such events, sufficient photometric coverage of the crossing should routinely be possible. In all cases, it is more difficult to disentangle the information arising from the cusp itself with the information from the global light curve. This generally implies that the analysis of these light curves will be more complicated, however this does not necessarily preclude an accurate measurement of $`\theta _{}`$.

Single-lens events are less desirable simply because they require a factor of $`50`$ times more astrometric observing time to achieve the same fractional accuracy in $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ as binary-lens events. Since the astrometric observations are likely to be the most limited resource, this makes single lens events considerably less attractive.

If it were possible to measure angular radii of stars in the Magellanic clouds (MCs), this would be quite interesting, due to the metal-poor nature of the stars. Unfortunately, there are several major hindrances to measuring $`\theta _{}`$ for a substantial number of stars in the MCs. First, the event rates toward both the MCs are small, and a large number of stars must be monitored just to detect a few events per year. Therefore, the number of caustic-crossing events is quite low. To date, there have been only two caustic crossing events toward the MCs: MACHO 98-SMC-1, which we discussed in §3.4, and MACHO LMC-9. These events have source magnitudes of $`V_S=22.4`$ (Afonso et al. 2000) and $`V_S=21.4`$ (Alcock et al. 2000a), respectively, which brings up a second difficulty: SIM cannot follow source stars fainter than $`V20`$, so these two events could not have been used to measure the angular radii of their source stars. In fact, even if the entire LMC were monitored for microlensing, only $`1`$ event per year would have $`V_S20`$, and this event would be from an evolved star. The probability of a caustic-crossing event (either binary or single lens) is smaller by at least an order of magnitude. The paucity of events and faintness of the source stars might be circumvented if sufficiently rapid Target of Opportunity times are available. In this case, it might be possible to use intrinsically fainter source stars, for which caustic-crossing event will be more common, and measure the astrometric displacement during the brief period of time when the source is highly magnified as it crosses the caustic. The maximum magnification of a source of dimensionless size $`\rho _{}`$ crossing a fold caustic is $`A_{\mathrm{max}}\rho _{}^{1/2}`$. For main-sequence sources, $`A_{\mathrm{max}}30`$, or more than three magnitudes, and thus sources with $`V_S23`$ can briefly be brightened to SIM detectability. For example, the source star of MACHO 98-SMC-1 was brighter than $`V18`$ for about 7 hours during the second caustic crossing. Finally, even if the source does attain a sufficient brightness to be measurable by SIM, it remains to be seen whether the centroid varies sufficiently during this time to provide an accurate measurement of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. This is especially difficult in light of the fact that typical value of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ for self-lensing events toward the MCs are only an order of magnitude larger than SIM’s accuracy (Paczyński 1998, Gould & Salim 1999). In summary, it appears that it will be quite difficult to measure angular radii of stars in the MCs using this method, especially if the majority of the events seen toward these targets are due to self-lensing (Sahu 1994).

### 4.2. Complications to $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ Measurement

The method we have presented here is only interesting if it can feasibly be used to make precise $`\theta _{}`$ measurements for a large number of sources with reasonable expenditure of resources. Since the requisite astrometric instruments are likely to be the most limited resource, it is crucial that accurate and unambiguous determinations of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ be generically possible using a few astrometric measurements, when combined with the photometric light curve solution. We have explained how a complete photometric solution generally leads to a prediction for the astrometric centroid shift up to an unknown scale $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and orientation $`\alpha `$ on the sky. However, this is true only under a number of simplifying assumptions, including uniform motion of the observer, source, and lens, dark lenses, isolated sources, and unique global solutions. If one or more of these assumptions are violated, then the prediction for shape of the astrometric curve may not be unique, and thus the measurement of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ may be compromised. We therefore discuss each of these complications and under what conditions they may be important.

#### 4.2.1 Binary Lens Degeneracies

Binary lenses are characterized by two quantities: $`q`$, the mass ratio, and $`d`$, the instantaneous projected separation in units of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. It has been demonstrated both theoretically (Dominik 1999a) and observationally (Afonso et al. 2000, Albrow et al. 2002) that certain limiting cases of binary lenses can exhibit extremely similar observable properties. In particular, Dominik (1999) showed that the binary-lens equation can be approximated by an single lens with external shear, or Chang-Refsdal (CR) lens (Chang & Refsdal 1979,1984), near the individual masses for widely-separated binaries ($`d1`$), and near the secondary (least massive) lens when $`d1`$. Furthermore, near the center-of-mass of a close binary, the lens equation is well-approximated by a quadrupole lens, and both the quadrupole lens and CR-lens can exhibit extremely similar magnifications when the quadrupole moment is equated to the shear (Albrow et al. 2002). Thus there can exist multiple degenerate solutions to an observed photometric light curve, even with extremely accurate photometry. However the astrometric behavior of these degenerate solutions is very similar both in the shape and overall scale of the astrometric curves, at least for the close/wide degeneracy (Gould & Han 2000). Therefore this degeneracy should not affect the determination of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ using the prediction from the light curve. It is likely that the other intrinsic denegeracies will also not affect the determination of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, since the degeneracy arises from the lens equation itself, and thus affects both the photometric and astrometric curve in the same manner.

Note that it is important that the normalization of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ be consistent for the two degenerate solutions. For example, consider the case of the close/wide degeneracy in MACHO 98-SMC-1 (Afonso et al 2000, Gould & Han 2000). If one normalizes to the total mass of the binary, the close solution implies a value of $`\theta _{\mathrm{E},c}=76\mu \mathrm{as}`$, whereas the wide solution has $`\theta _{\mathrm{E},w}=170\mu \mathrm{as}`$. Since the astrometric curves are essentially identical (both in shape and scale), one might therefore suspect the inversion of this process would yield two equally likely values of $`\theta _{}`$ that differed by a factor of $`2`$. Of course, this ‘ambiguity’ is wholly artificial, and arises because the value of $`\theta _{\mathrm{E},w}`$ for the wide binary is normalized to the entire mass of the binary, whereas the lensing effects are basically caused by the least massive lens, since $`d=3.25`$. Normalizing to the mass of the single lens, $`\theta _{\mathrm{E},w}^{}=\theta _{\mathrm{E},w}(1+q^1)^{1/2}`$, where here $`q=0.24`$, and thus $`\theta _{\mathrm{E},w}^{}=75\mu \mathrm{as}`$, essentially identical to the close-binary solution. Note that as $`d`$ approaches unity, the identification of the ‘proper’ $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ normalization becomes more nebulous, since the lenses can no longer be considered independent. However, the degeneracies also become less severe as $`d1`$.

Dominik (1999b) has also shown that poorly-sampled binary lens light curve can also yield distinct degenerate solutions. Note that these solutions are ‘accidental’ in the sense that they do not arise from degeneracies in the lens equation itself. Thus Han et al. (1999) found that such degenerate photometric light curves yield astrometric curves which are widely different. Such degeneracies would prohibit the measurement of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ using a few astrometric measurements. Therefore well-sampled photometric light curves are essential for reliable measurements of $`\theta _{}`$.

#### 4.2.2 Parallax

If the two observers are displaced by a significant fraction of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}D\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, the angular Einstein ring radius projected onto the observer plane, then the source position $`𝒖`$ as seen by the two observers will be significantly different. Since SIM will be in an Earth-trailing orbit, it will drift away from the Earth at a rate of $`0.1\mathrm{AU}\mathrm{yr}^1`$. Thus after 2.5 years (half way through the SIM mission), it will be displaced from the Earth by $`\mathrm{}0.25\mathrm{AU}`$, which corresponds to a displacement in the Einstein ring of,

$$|\delta 𝒖|=\frac{\mathrm{}}{\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}}|\mathrm{sin}\gamma |,$$
(10)
where $`\gamma `$ is the angle between the the line of sight and the Earth-SIM vector. For typical bulge parameters,

$$\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}=7.6\mathrm{AU}\left(\frac{M}{0.3M_{}}\right)^{1/2},$$
(11)
and therefore $`|\delta 𝒖|3\%`$. This implies that both the magnification $`A`$ and the centroid shift $`\delta 𝜽_{cl}`$ will be significantly different (at a given time) as seen from the Earth and SIM. Since the value of $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ is not known a priori, $`|\delta 𝒖|`$ cannot be predicted from the ground-based photometry alone, and must be estimated from the astrometric data itself. Fortunately, SIM will likely have excellent photometric capabilities (see Gould & Salim 1999), and thus the relative magnifications between the light curves from the ground and SIM will provide additional constraints. Indeed, in our Monte Carlo simulations, we assumed that the astrometric observer was displaced by $`0.2\mathrm{AU}`$ from the Earth, and simultaneously fit for both $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ (among other parameters), and found that $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ could still be constrained quite accurately. This is because the information about $`\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}`$ comes primarily from the photometry, while the information about $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ comes primarily from the astrometry. Therefore, the two parameters are not degenerate. Note that a ‘byproduct’ of these measurements is a determination of the total mass of the binary lens (Gould & Salim 1999; Han & Kim 2000; Graff & Gould 2002)

There are two additional parallax effects. One is due to the motion of the Earth (or SIM) around the sun, and will become significant on timescales that are a substantial fraction of a year, which corresponds to many $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ for typical bulge events. There is also a second order effect that arises from the difference in projected velocities between the Earth and SIM. This effect is $`v_{}/\stackrel{~}{v}`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{v}\stackrel{~}{r}_\mathrm{E}/t_\mathrm{E}`$ is the transverse velocity of the lens projected on the observer plane, and is $`800\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for typical bulge self-lensing events. Since the velocities and positions of the Earth and SIM will be known, both of these effects can easily be included in the fit for the microlensing parallax, and so do not present any additional difficulties.

#### 4.2.3 Luminous Lenses and Binary Sources

With its planned 10 meter baseline, SIM will have a resolution of $`10\mathrm{m}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{s}`$, sufficient to resolve the majority of unassociated nearby stars that are blended with the source in ground-based photometry (Han & Kim 1999). Since the photometric blending is well-constrained in binary-lens events, unambiguous prediction of the unblended astrometric behavior of the source is possible. Thus, blending will typically not affect the measurement of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. However, luminous lenses and companions to the source star with separations $`10\mathrm{mas}`$ will not be automatically resolved by SIM (Jeong, Han & Park 1999). Dalal & Griest (2001) have shown that, using two pointings, this limit may be lowered to $`3\mathrm{m}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{s}`$, however it is essentially impossible to resolve multiple sources with separations below this limit (e.g. binary source companions). In these cases, all that will be measured is the total centroid of all the sources in the resolution element.

The centroid in the presence of luminous lenses, $`𝝋_{cl,b}`$, is related to the centroid in the absence of blending, $`𝝋_{cl}`$, by

$$𝝋_{cl,b}=\left[𝝋_{cl}+\frac{f_t}{A}𝝋_b\right]\left(1+\frac{f_t}{A}\right)^1,$$
(12)
where $`f_t_iF_{b,i}/F_0`$ is the sum of the flux of all unlensed sources (blends) relative to $`F_0`$, the baseline flux of the lensed source, $`A`$ is the magnification of the source, and $`𝝋_b`$ is the centroid of the blends relative to the origin of the lens. From equation (12), it is clear blending is more complicated in astrometric microlensing than in photometric microlensing: whereas photometric blending can be described by one parameter, the blend fraction $`f_t`$, astrometric blending requires two additional parameters, the centroid of light of the blend $`𝝋_b`$. A special case of astrometric blending is bright lens blending. In the single lens case, this eliminates the blend location parameters, the location of the centroid of light is the moving lens (i.e. $`𝝋_b=0`$). In bright binary lens blending, only one parameter is eliminated, the centroid of light is somewhere on the lens axis between the two stars in the lens. However, it will generally not be known a priori which case one is dealing with, and therefore $`𝝋_b`$ must be included as a parameter in the astrometric fit.

Blending is problematic because it effectively ‘dilutes’ the astrometric shift between two points in the lightcurve, which is qualitatively similar to the effect of changing $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. If the event is not well covered, these two effects can be quite degenerate. In order to determine how degenerate blending is with the $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, we have included in our Monte Carlo simulations a fixed amount of blended light of $`f_t=1\%,10\%`$, and $`90\%`$. We assume that $`f_t`$ is known (i.e. from photometry), but $`𝝋_b`$ is not. The results are shown in Figure 2. We find that, if the blending fraction is close to 1, then the two effects are nearly degenerate, and our fractional uncertainty in $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ increases by two orders of magnitude to of order unity. However, for $`f_t1\%`$, the median error increases by less than a factor of two. In most cases, the blending will be known to be small from the photometric data. In these cases, the fractional uncertainty in $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ will not be seriously degraded. The few events with known large blending can be easily jettisoned from the sample.

#### 4.2.4 Lens Rotation

The photometric effects of lens rotation in binary microlensing events has been explored theoretically by Dominik (1998) and has been detected in event MACHO 1997-BUL-41 (Albrow et al. 2000). The astrometric effects of rotating binary-lenses have not been explored, and it is therefore difficult to draw any general conclusions as to the importance of this effect. However, to the extent that it is detectable in the photometric light curve, lens rotation poses no difficulties, as its astrometric effect should be predictable from the global solution. Effects that are photometrically undetectable but astrometrically significant are potentially problematic.

The amount that a binary-lens rotates during $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ is given by,

$$\psi 4.5^{}d^{3/2}\left(\frac{M}{0.3M_{}}\right)^{1/4}\left(\frac{D^{}}{1.5\mathrm{kpc}}\right)^{1/4}\left(\frac{v}{150\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1}\right)^1,$$
(13)
where $`D^{}=D_{\mathrm{ol}}D_{\mathrm{ls}}/D_{\mathrm{os}}`$, and assuming circular, face-on orbits. Because the caustic cross-section is maximized for binaries with separations of order $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$, the majority of detected caustic-crossings will have $`d1`$ (Baltz & Gondolo 2001). Therefore, for typical events, the effects of binary rotation should be small if astrometric observations are closely spaced with respect to the event timescale $`t_\mathrm{E}`$. This is generally also advantageous for the accurate recovery of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ (See §3.3).

### 4.3. Measuring $`D_{\mathrm{os}}`$

In this paper, we have emphasized the measurement of the angular radius $`\theta _{}`$, rather than the physical radius, $`R_{}`$. However, it may also be interesting to measure $`R_{}`$ for some events. In order to do this, the distance to the source star must be measured independently. Fortunately, the astrometric accuracy needed to measure $`\theta _{}`$ is generally sufficient to measure the parallax $`\pi _s`$ of the source stars,

$$\pi _s=125\mu \mathrm{as}\left(\frac{D_{\mathrm{os}}}{8\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}}\right)^1.$$
(14)
In order to measure $`R_{}`$ to a similar accuracy as $`\theta _{}`$ ($`5\%`$), $`\pi _s`$ must be measured to somewhat better accuracy, which implies an astrometric error of $`\sigma _\theta 5\mu \mathrm{as}`$. For SIM and an $`I=18`$ source, this is achievable with $`7`$ hours of integration, which is considerably more time than is needed for the $`\theta _{}`$ measurement alone. However, it is important to note that these measurements can be made after the microlensing event is over. Therefore, it should be possible to employ ground-based interferometers for the measurement of $`\pi _s`$, rather than spend precious SIM resources, at least for brighter sources.

### 4.4. Typing the Source Star

A measurement of $`\theta _{}`$ is essentially useless if the spectral type and luminosity class of the source is not known. The source stars of microlensing events can be typed in two ways. The first is to simply measure the color and apparent magnitude of the source. This information is generally acquired automatically from the fit to the photometric data of the microlensing event.777Note that blending in generally not a problem, as binary-lens events can typically be easily deblended. By positioning the source star on a color-magnitude diagram of other stars in the field, one can generally type the source to reasonable accuracy. The primary pitfalls of this method are differential reddening and projection effects (i.e. the source may in the foreground or background of the bulk of the stars in the field).

A more robust way of typing the source star is to acquire spectra. This is best done when the source is highly magnified as it crosses a caustic, as this minimizes the effects of blended light and increases the signal-to-noise. Thus such measurements require target-of-opportunity observations. For highly-magnified events, spectra with $`S/N100`$ per resolution element can be achieved with exposure times of tens of minutes for low-resolution spectra (Lennon et al. 1996), or a couple of hours for high-resolution spectra (Minniti et al. 1998), using 8m or 10m-class telescopes. Although low-resolution spectra are sufficient for accurate

FIG. 3.– The cumulative distribution of I magnitudes for OGLE and MOA alerts in 2002. The solid line is for OGLE, the dotted line is for MOA, and the dashed line is the total. The majority ($`90\%`$) of alerts are from OGLE.

spectral typing, high resolution spectra are desirable for a number of other applications, including resolution of the atmosphere of the source star (Gaudi & Gould 1999, Castro et al. 2001, Albrow et al. 2001b), detailed abundance analysis (Minniti et al. 1998), and detection of a luminous lens (Mao, Reetz, & Lennon 1998). Note also that as a byproduct, true space velocities of a sample of stars in the bulge will be obtained by combining the proper motions and parallaxes of the sources acquired from astrometric measurements with radial velocities determined from the spectra.

### 4.5. An Example Campaign

In this section, we review the requirements for measuring $`\theta _{}`$ for the source stars of Galactic bulge microlensing events, and outline the resources needed for a campaign aimed at measuring $`\theta _{}`$ for a significant number of sources.

The first requirement is a large sample of caustic-crossing binary-lens events from which to choose targets, which in turn requires an even larger sample of microlensing events. A large sample is important in that it ensures that only interesting and promising sources and events are followed. Currently, both the OGLE and MOA collaborations monitor many millions of stars in the Galactic bulge. Both reduce their data real-time, enabling them to issue ‘alerts,’ notification of ongoing microlensing events (Udalski et al. 1994, Bond et al. 2002a).888For online alerts, see http://www.astrouw.edu.pl/$``$ftp/ogle/ogle3/ews/ews.html (OGLE) and http://www.roe.ac.uk/$``$iab/alert/alert.html (MOA). Combined, these two collaborations should alert about $`500`$ events per year (with the majority of alerts from OGLE). Extrapolating from previous results (Alcock et al. 2000a, Udalski et al. 2000), approximately $`5\%`$ of these will be caustic-crossing binaries, or 25 events per year. Figure 3 shows the cumulative distribution of apparent (i.e. uncorrected for redenning) $`I`$ magnitudes of the 438 independent bulge microlensing alerts in 2002 for which baseline magnitudes were available. Of these events, 382 ($`87\%`$) were alerted by OGLE, 61 ($`14\%`$) were alerted by MOA, and 5 were alerted by both collaborations. For the typical colors of sources in the bulge ($`VI2`$), only about $`50\%`$ of the alerts have $`V<20`$, and thus would have been accessible to SIM. The boundary between dwarfs and giants will occur at an apparent magnitude that depends on the color of the source, the distance to the source, and the reddening. However, for definiteness we will simply assume that the boundary between giants and main sequence stars occurs at roughly $`I=17`$. With this assumption, we can therefore expect that approximately $`20\%`$ of all alerted events will be due to giant stars. Therefore, we can expect approximately $`20\%\times 5\%1\%`$ of all alerts, or $`5`$ events (assuming 500 alerts), to be caustic crossing events with giant sources, and $`80\%\times 5\%4\%`$, or $`20`$ events, to be caustic crossing events with main sequence sources, $`8`$ of which will be bright enough to monitor with SIM. 999This assumes that the detection efficiency of binary-lens events does not depend on the $`I`$-magnitude of the source. In fact, deviations from the single-lens form will generally be easier to detect in brighter sources, however this bias is likely to be relatively small for caustic-crossing events, which generally exhibit dramatic and easily-detectable deviations from the point lens form. This may seem in contradiction with the fact that none of the five events toward the bulge presented in Table 1 are main sequence sources. However, this almost certainly a selection effect: bright binary-lens events are currently preferentially monitored by the follow-up collaborations, in order to achieve higher signal-to-noise during the second caustic crossing. These numbers are likely to remain valid at least for the next several years. However, in the more distant future, and in particular by the time SIM is launched, it is likely that the next generation of microlensing survey collaborations will have come online. Thus we can expect that, when SIM time is operational,101010The projected launch date for SIM is currently 2009. a considerably larger sample of caustic-crossing events will be available.

Survey-type experiments are needed to discover microlensing events toward the bulge, and survey-quality data is generally sufficient to uncover the caustic-crossing nature of the target events. However, as we discussed in §3.1, more accurate and densely-sampled photometry is generally needed during the caustic crossing in order to measure $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. Currently, there are several collaborations with dedicated (or substantial) access to 1-2m class telescopes distributed throughout the southern hemisphere that closely monitor alerted microlensing events with the goal of discovering deviations from the single-lens form, with emphasis on search for extrasolar planets (Albrow et al. 1998, Rhie et al. 2000, Tsapras et al. 2001, Bond et al. 2002b). These collaborations have also been quite successful in predicting and monitoring binary-lens caustic crossings. It seems likely that these collaborations, or similar ones, will still be in place when the next generation of interferometers, or even SIM, come online.

In our Monte Carlo simulations we derived the expected precisions $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ assuming that the photometric errors were dominated by photon statistics, and that a total of $`N=60,000`$ photons where collected over the entire exposure time for each event. This corresponds to total exposure time of $`T=1.6\mathrm{hour}`$ for SIM on an $`I=18`$ source. We assume the fractional photometric uncertainty is $`N^{1/2}`$, and that the astrometric uncertainty was related to the photometric uncertainty via the expression, $`\sigma _\theta =N^{1/2}\theta _f`$, with $`\theta _f=2.5`$mas, as appropriate for SIM. Since we assumed that the photometric and astrometric errors are given simply by photon statistics, it is trivial to scale our results for other total exposure times $`T`$ and source brightnesses assuming the characteristics of SIM: $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}T^{1/2}`$, and $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}10^{0.2(I18)}`$. For the purposes of planning observations, and providing an order-of-magnitude estimate for the number of angular radii that can be measured for a given amount of SIM time, it is useful to derive an expression for the exposure time required to achieve a given median photometric precision. To be conservative, we assume that the blending is small, but non-negligible. Specifically, we adopt the median error found for the Monte Carlo simulations assuming a blend fraction of $`f_t=1\%`$, which is $`\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}5.5\%`$. Then,

$$T2\mathrm{hr}\left(\frac{\sigma _{\theta _\mathrm{E}}/\theta _\mathrm{E}}{5\%}\right)^210^{0.4(I18)}.$$
(15)
Thus, for giant sources ($`I15`$), $`7.4`$ minutes are required to achieve $`5\%`$ precision, whereas for main-sequence sources ($`I20`$), $`12.3`$ hours are required for $`5\%`$ precision, or $`1.4`$ hours for $`15\%`$ precision.

We have focussed here primarily on astrometric observations with SIM because its capabilities are well-suited to this application. The basic requirements to be able to measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ accurately for the events we have discussed are relatively high astrometric precisions, $`10\mu \mathrm{as}`$, and high sensitivity (via, i.e. large apertures), as the sources we are considering are faint, $`I=1520`$. These faint sources are inaccessible to current ground-based interferometers. Upcoming large-aperture, ground-based interferometers, such as the Very Large Telescope Interferometer or the Keck Interferometer, should be able to achieve the requisite astrometric precisions on all of the bright ($`I15`$) giant events. If the target microlensing source happens to have a bright star within the isoplanatic angle, it may be possible to employ phase referencing to extend sensitivity to very faint $`(I20)`$ sources. This would allow one to measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ for main-sequences sources from the ground as well. Finally, it may be possible to determine $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ from single-epoch measurements of the visibility and/or closure phase (Delplancke, Górski, & Richichi 2001, Dalal & Lane 2003). In this way, sensitivity could plausibly be extended to main-sequences sources by making carefully-timed interferometric measurements of the source when it is highly-magnified during a caustic crossing. However, it is not clear if there exists enough structure in the image positions during this time to extract $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. This remains an interesting topic for future study. Non-targeted space-based astrometric surveys, such as the Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics, are generally not well-suited to this application, due to the relatively sparse sampling of the source stars.

Finally, access to target-of-opportunity time on 8-10m class telescopes would allow for accurate spectral typing of the source stars. Several nights per bulge season would likely be adequate to type the $`25`$ caustic-crossing events per year. However, more time would be required to perform some of the auxiliary science discussed in §4.3, such as resolution of the source-star atmospheres.

Thus, by combining alerts from survey collaborations, with comprehensive ground-based photometry from follow-up collaborations with access to dedicated (or semi-dedicated) 1m-class telescopes, and a modest allocation of a total 10 hours of SIM time, it should be possible to measure the angular radii of $`80`$ giant stars in the bulge to $`5\%`$, or $`7`$ main sequence stars to $`15\%`$. Several nights of target-of-opportunity time on $`810`$m telescopes should allow for accurate spectral typing of the sources via high or low-resolution spectroscopy.

## 5. Conclusion

We have outlined a method to measure the angular radii $`\theta _{}`$ of giant and main sequence source stars of fold caustic-crossing binary microlensing events toward the Galactic bulge. Our method to measure $`\theta _{}`$ consists of four steps. First, survey-quality data can be used to discover and alert caustic-crossing binary-lensing events. Such data is sufficient to characterize the event timescale $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ and the angle $`\varphi `$ of source trajectory with respect to the caustic. Dense sampling of one of the caustic crossings yields the caustic-crossing timescale $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. The global solution to the binary-lens light curve yields a prediction for the trajectory of the centroid of the source up to an unknown angle $`\alpha `$, and the scale, $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. Thus a few, precise astrometric measurements during the course of the event yield $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$. The angular source radius is then simply given by $`\theta _{}=\theta _\mathrm{E}(\mathrm{\Delta }t/t_\mathrm{E})\mathrm{sin}\varphi `$.

We argued, based on past experience with modeling binary-lens events, that the parameters $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, $`\varphi `$, and $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ should be measurable to a few percent accuracy, provided one caustic-crossing is densely and accurately sampled, and the entire event is reasonably well-covered.

We then performed a series of Monte Carlo experiments that demonstrated that astrometric measurements during the course of the binary-lens event should allow for the determination of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ to $`2\%`$ accuracy, assuming photon-limited statistics and a total of 60,000 photons per event. This is a factor of $`50`$ fewer photons than are required to measure $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ to the same precision in single-lens events and corresponds to an exposure time of $`T=1.6`$ hour with SIM on an $`I=18`$ source. Therefore, it should be possible to measure $`\theta _{}`$ for a significant sample of giant and main-sequence stars in the bulge with reasonable expenditure of resources.

We would like to thank Neal Dalal for helpful conversations. We would also like to thank the anonymous referee for useful comments and suggestions. This work was supported by NASA through a Hubble Fellowship grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555, by JPL contract 1226901, and by the Science Research Center (SRC) of the Korean Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF).


text:
# Comment on “Experimental Demonstration of Violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for Small Systems and Short Time Scales”

In a recent letter, Wang et al. claimed that they experimentally demonstrate the violation of the second law of thermodynamics for a colloidal particle in an optical trap moving at a constant velocity. We show that their results cannot conclude the violation of the second law since (i) the particle does not do the net work and (ii) what they observed are merely equilibrium position fluctuations of the particle. Also, the Nosé-Hoover dynamics is not necessary to explain their results.

When a colloidal particle in water is trapped by a harmonic optical trap moving at a constant velocity $`v_0`$, the position along the moving direction, $`x`$, obeys the Langevin equation

$$\zeta \frac{dx}{dt}+k(xv_0t)=f(t)$$
(1)
where $`\zeta `$ is the drag coefficient and $`k`$ the trapping constant. The Langevin force $`f(t)`$ is a zero-mean Gaussian random variable satisfying $`f(t)f(t^{})=2k_BT\zeta \delta (tt^{})`$, where $`T`$ is the water temperature. Then the position measured from the trap center, $`\delta x(s)x(s)v_0s`$, is

$`\delta x(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta v_0(e^{\frac{kt}{\zeta }}1)}{k}}+x_0e^{\frac{kt}{\zeta }}+{\displaystyle _0^t}{\displaystyle \frac{ds}{\zeta }}e^{\frac{k(ts)}{\zeta }}f(s)`$ (2)
where the initial position $`x_0`$ ia a random variable obeying an equilibrium distribution $`\rho _{\mathrm{eq}}(x_0)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{kx_0^2}{2k_BT}\right)`$.

In Ref. 1, the work done by the moving trap divided by $`k_BT`$, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t\frac{1}{k_BT}_0^t𝑑sv_0\{k\delta x(s)\}`$, is investigated for individual trajectories. As a linear combination of mutually independent Gaussian random variables, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ is Gaussian with average $`m_t\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ and variance $`\sigma _t^2(\mathrm{\Sigma }_tm_t)^2`$. From (2), one obtains $`\sigma _t^2=2m_t`$,

$`m_t={\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2\zeta }{k_BT}}\left\{t{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{k}}\left(1e^{\frac{kt}{\zeta }}\right)\right\}`$ (3)
then, ‘the transient fluctuation theorem’ of Ref. 1

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Pr}(\mathrm{\Sigma }_t<0)}{\mathrm{Pr}(\mathrm{\Sigma }_t>0)}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2m_t}{\sigma _t^2}}\mathrm{\Sigma }_t\right)_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t>0}=e^{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t}_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t>0}`$ (4)
and an explicit expression in terms of the error function erf($`x`$)

$$e^{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t}_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t>0}=\frac{1\mathrm{erf}(\sqrt{m_t}/2)}{1+\mathrm{erf}(\sqrt{m_t}/2)}$$
(5)
In Fig. 1, Eq.(5) and the result of Ref. 1 are compared for parameter values consistent with the experiment. The agreement is quite satisfactory.

Although the colloidal particle sometimes does work because of $`\mathrm{Pr}(\mathrm{\Sigma }_t<0)0`$, it does not do the net work as an average: $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t=m_t0`$ and the second law is not violated. In this respect, the situation is similar to that in the Feynman ratchet at thermal equilibrium, where the ratchet never does a net work in spite of fluctuations and whose behavior is consistent with the second law.

As easily seen, the dominant contribution comes from the $`x_0`$-fluctuation. This means that the ‘entropy consuming trajectories’, for which $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t<0`$, are generated by equilibrium fluctuations: Suppose, just before the trap starts to move, thermal fluctuations cause a particle translation from the trap center along the direction of the trap motion. Then, even after the trap starts to move, the particle moves backwards because of the harmonic force from the trap and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ is negative. This process continues until the particle reaches the new equilibrium position. In short, the trajectories with negative $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ are merely the trajectories whose initial positions happen to translate opposite to the trap motion by equilibrium fluctuation.