Signatures of rotating binaries in microlensing experiments

Gravitational microlensing offers a powerful method with which to probe a variety of binary-lens systems, as the binarity of the lens introduces deviations from the typical (single-lens) Paczyński behaviour in the event light curves. Generally, a static binary lens is considered to fit the observed light curve and, when the orbital motion is taken into account, an oversimplified model is usually employed. In this paper, we treat the binary-lens motion in a realistic way and focus on simulated events that are fitted well by a Paczyński curve. We show that an accurate timing analysis of the residuals (calculated with respect to the best-fitting Paczyński model) is usually sufficient to infer the orbital period of the binary lens. It goes without saying that the independently estimated period may be used to further constrain the orbital parameters obtained by the best-fitting procedure, which often gives degenerate solutions. We also present a preliminary analysis of the event OGLE-2011-BLG-1127 / MOA-2011-BLG-322, which has been recognized to be the result of a binary lens. The period analysis results in a periodicity of ≃12 d, which confirms the oscillation of the observed data around the best-fitting model. The estimated periodicity is probably associated with an intrinsic variability of the source star, and therefore there is an opportunity to use this technique to investigate either the intrinsic variability of the source or the effects induced by the binary-lens orbital motion.