Parallax in microlensing toward the Magellanic Clouds: effect on detection efficiency and detectability

Abstract: Aims. We study the impact of the parallax on the search for very long timescale microlensing events towards the Magellanic Clouds due to dark massive compact objects within the past MACHO and EROS, the ongoing MOA and OGLE, and the future LSST surveys. We quantify the impact of neglecting this effect on the classical event selection process and also quantify the parallax detectability without the help of follow-up observations.Methods. We define a distance between true events affected by parallax and the closest events without parallax. This distance is used to estimate the probability of missing the preselection of events because of parallax, for any survey characterised by its time sampling and photometric performance. We also define another distance to quantify the detectability of the parallax effect, in order to trigger complementary observations.Results. We find that the preselection of years long time scale events is marginally affected by parallax for all surveys, provided the criteria are reasonably tight. We also show that the parallax should be detectable in the majority of the events found by the LSST survey without follow-up observations.