The complete catalogue of light curves in equal-mass binary microlensing

Abstract

The light curves observed in microlensing events due to binary lenses span an extremely wide variety of forms, characterized by U-shaped caustic crossings and/or additional smoother peaks. However, all peaks of the binary-lens light curve can be traced back to features of caustics of the lens system. Moreover, all peaks can be categorized as one of only four types (cusp-grazing, cusp-crossing, fold-crossing or fold-grazing). This enables us to present the first complete map of the parameter space of the equal-mass case by identifying regions in which light curves feature the same number and nature of peaks. We find that the total number of morphologies that can be obtained is 73 out of 232 different regions. The partition of the parameter space so-obtained provides a new key to optimize modelling of observed events through a clever choice of initial conditions for fitting algorithms.