Dr. Himanshu Verma

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, planned for launch on August 30, 2026, is all set to revolutionize our understanding of exoplanets and black holes through microlensing. I will give a brief overview of Roman and show how gravitational microlensing helps us find dark or faint objects that are otherwise hard to detect. I will then present my work in the RGES-PIT collaboration on developing high-resolution image observables crucial for measuring lens mass and distance, including image elongation and color-dependent centroid shift. I will also introduce Lensed Image Elongation (LIE), a method I developed to measure the Einstein angle almost in real time during microlensing events. The accepted LIE Roman Cycle-1 proposal, which I led as PI, targets the detection and mass characterization of tens of isolated stellar-mass black holes each survey season. I will also briefly share preliminary results from the Euclid Galactic Bulge Survey (March 2025). Using observational Euclid images, I have developed an image-level, end-to-end tool to derive the completeness-corrected stellar luminosity function, which describes the brightness distribution of stars, toward the Bulge. This deep stellar catalog and luminosity function provide an essential baseline for interpreting Roman microlensing events and maximizing Roman’s scientific return.