Testing General Relativity with Binary Lens Microlensing Events

Abstract

Einstein's General Relativity (GR), which has been precisely tested on galaxy and solar system scales, is still poorly constrained in extremely weak gravitational fields (with dimensionless Newtonian potentials of $\Phi \sim 10^{-8}$). In this Letter, we propose a new method to probe such a weak-field regime of gravity and measure the spatial curvature generated per unit mass. Specifically, binary microlensing events provide a laboratory to measure the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameter ($\gamma$), by combining the lensing mass ($M_{\mathrm{lens}}^{\mathrm{GR}}$) inferred from microlensing with the dynamical mass ($M_{\mathrm{dyn}}$) determined from interferometric astrometry. Astrometric tracking of binary lenses was previously hindered by their faintness and minuscule angular separations (typically a few milliarcseconds). This limitation has been alleviated by the deployment of GRAVITY+, which pushes the instrument's sensitivity and astrometric precision to unprecedented heights. Based on astrometric simulations of the binary microlensing event ASASSN-22av, we directly estimate $\gamma$ at the precision of ~23%. Such test of GR in the extremely weak-field regime can be further improved to much higher precision (~3%), based on more binary microlensing events with precise determination of the dynamical/lens mass.

9 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables

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