  Just two of 10 extrasolar planets found by microlensing have been detected by
the planetary caustic despite the higher probability of planet detection
relative to the central caustic which has been responsible for four extrasolar
planet detections. This is because the perturbations induced by the planetary
caustic are unpredictable, thus making it difficult to carry out strategic
observations. However, if future high-cadence monitoring surveys are conducted,
the majority of planetary caustic events including the events by free-floating
planets and wide-separation planets would be detected. Hence, understanding the
planetary caustic perturbations becomes important. In this paper, we
investigate in detail the pattern of the planetary caustic perturbations. From
this study, we find three properties of the planetary caustic perturbations.
First, planetary systems with the same star-planet separation (s) basically
produce perturbations of constant strength regardless of the planet/star mass
ratio (q), but the duration of each perturbation scales with sqrt{q}. Second,
close planetary systems with the same separation produce essentially the same
negative perturbations between two triangular-shaped caustics regardless of q,
but the duration of the perturbations scales with sqrt{q}. Third, the positive
perturbations for planetary systems with the same mass ratio become stronger as
the caustic shrinks with the increasing |log s|, while the negative
perturbations become weaker. We estimate the degeneracy in the determination of
q that occurs in planetary caustic events. From this, we find that the mass
ratio can be more precisely determined as q increases and |log s| decreases. We
also find that the degeneracy range of events for which the source star passes
close to the planetary caustic is usually very narrow, and thus it would not
significantly affect the determination of q.

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics