An Additional Application of the Space Interferometry Mission to Gravitational Microlensing Experiments

Abstract

Despite the detection of a large number of gravitational microlensing events, the nature of Galactic dark matter remains very uncertain. This uncertainty is due to two major reasons: the lens parameter degeneracy in the measured Einstein timescale and the blending problem in dense field photometry. Recently, consideration has been given to routine astrometric followup observations of lensing events using the {\it Space Interferometry Mission} (SIM) as a means of breaking the lens parameter degeneracy in microlensing events. In this paper, we show that in addition to breaking the lens parameter degeneracy, SIM observations can also be used to correct for nearly all types of blending. Therefore, by resolving both the problems of the lens parameter degeneracy and blending, SIM observations of gravitational lensing events will significantly better constrain the nature of Galactic dark matter.