Wide-orbit Exoplanet Occurrence Rate

Radosław Poleski and OGLE team

Exoplanets that do not orbit any star, or free-floating exoplanets, are some of the most intriguing astronomical objects. Candidate free-floating exoplanets are discovered using gravitational microlensing technique as very short events that show only a single lens. In order to verify if these candidates are truly free-floating we should consider an alternative interpretation, i.e., that the event is caused by a bound exoplanet on a wide orbit and by chance the signal from the host is not detected. I will present the most recent estimate of occurrence rate of wide-orbit exoplanets (i.e., similar to Uranus and Neptune) with masses smaller than a few Jupiter masses. I will also show a method to derive the occurrence rate that takes into account the uncertainties of each object parameters.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 12, 266-269 (2022)

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