Towards a Revolution of Microlensing Planets: from Ground to Space, from Mass-ratio to Mass

To understand how planets form, a key step is watching outside the solar system to detect many exoplanets. The exoplanet architecture can infer the underlying planetary formation process. The gravitational microlensing technique is complementary to other methods and is currently the only method that can explore all planetary masses for wide-orbit and free-floating planets. In this talk, I will review the microlensing planet search and statistical results from different microlensing planetary samples. The latest results show that there are two populations of wide-orbit planets and free-floating planets are more common than stellar objects. I will also introduce the future of the microlensing planet field, e.g., the DECam Rogue Earths And Mars Survey (DREAMS), the 30-meter class telescopes, the NASA Roman space telescope, and the Chinese Earth 2.0 microlensing space telescope.


Speaker: 
Weicheng Zang (Westlake University)
Place: 
KIAA-auditorium
Host: 
Ruobig Dong
Time: 
Thursday, November 20, 2025 - 3:30PM to Thursday, November 20, 2025 - 4:30PM
Biography: 
Weicheng Zang will join Westlake University in January 2026. He earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy from Tsinghua University in 2022. Following that, he was a CfA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. His research focuses on the detection and characterization of wide-orbit and free-floating planets through gravitational microlensing. He is currently leading several surveys/facilites, including the DECam Rogue Earths and Mars Survey and the microlensing telescope aboard the Chinese Earth 2.0 satellite.