A free-floating planet population in the Galaxy?

Abstract

Most young low-mass stars are born as binary systems, and circumstellar disks have recently been observed around the individual components of proto-binary systems (e.g. L1551-IRS5). Thus planets and planetary systems are likely to form around the individual stellar components in sufficiently wide binary systems. However, a good fraction of planets born in binary systems will in the long run be subject to ejection due to gravitational perturbations. Therefore, we expect that there should exist a free-floating population of Jupiter-like or even Earth-like planets in interstellar space. There is hope to detect the free-floating Jupiters through gravitational microlensing observations towards the Galactic Bulge, especially with large-format detectors in the near-infrared (e.g. with VISTA or NGST), on timescales of a few days.