Prediction of Astrometric and Timing Microlensing Events with Pulsars by ATNF Catalog and Gaia DR3

Abstract

Determining the mass of neutron stars is crucial for understanding their formation, evolution, and interior structure. Currently, only a few dozen neutron stars have had their masses measured, and most of them belong to binary systems. However, there are a huge number of isolated neutron stars with unknown masses. Microlensing events with neutron stars provide unique opportunities for knowing these compact objects. Astrometric microlensing with a background source lensed by a neutron star might be used to determine the neutron star's mass by measuring the deviation of the motion of the centroid of the images from its unlensed one. We search and predict these recent and future events based on the Australia Telescope National Facility Pulsar Catalog and Gaia DR3. We find 60 candidate astrometric microlensing events caused by neutron stars and the probability distributions of their observables by the Monte Carlo sampling. We also find four candidate “timing microlensing” events with a pulsar lensed by a foreground object that might be detected by timing measurements. While some of these events may be verified by future astrometric missions or pulsar-timing observations, we note that our prediction of these events is significantly restricted by the uncertainties of the available astrometric and timing measurements after assessing and comparing our results with previous works.