THE IMPACT OF STELLAR MULTIPLICITY ON PLANETARY SYSTEMS. I. THE RUINOUS INFLUENCE OF CLOSE BINARY COMPANIONS

By A. Kraus, Michael J. Ireland, D. Huber, A. Mann, T. Dupuy. 2016

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The dynamical influence of binary companions is expected to profoundly influence planetary systems. However, the difficulty of identifying planets in binary systems has left the magnitude of this effect uncertain; despite numerous theoretical hurdles to their formation and survival, at least some binary systems clearly host planets. We present high-resolution imaging of 382 Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) obtained using adaptive-optics imaging and nonredundant aperture-mask interferometry on the Keck II telescope. Among the full sample of 506 candidate binary companions to KOIs, we super-resolve some binary systems to projected separations of <5 au, showing that planets might form in these dynamically active environments. However, the full distribution of projected separations for our planet-host sample more broadly reveals a deep paucity of binary companions at solar-system scales. For a field binary population, we should have found 58 binary companions with projected separation ρ < 50 au and mass ratio q > 0.4; we instead only found 23 companions (a 4.6σ deficit), many of which must be wider pairs that are only close in projection. When the binary population is parametrized with a semimajor axis cutoff acut and a suppression factor inside that cutoff Sbin, we find with correlated uncertainties that inside au, the planet occurrence rate in binary systems is only times that of wider binaries or single stars. Our results demonstrate that a fifth of all solar-type stars in the Milky Way are disallowed from hosting planetary systems due to the influence of a binary companion.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Education, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a96f62acde6333e32acddb4c49b15a5a07ed14b2

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Citations in the corpus

The Gaia–Kepler Stellar Properties Catalog. I. Homogeneous Fundamental Properties for 186,301 Kepler Stars (2020, methodology): “In addition, after crossmatching our sample with the binaries of Kraus et al. (2016), we found that 248 out of the 263 matched primaries had “AAA” 2MASS photometry, while seven of those without “AAA” photometry had low contrast (∆mlesssim 2), moderately resolved (2”<θsep< 4”) companions.”
Identifying Exoplanets with Deep Learning: A Five-planet Resonant Chain around Kepler-80 and an Eighth Planet around Kepler-90 (2017, background): “Finally, Kraus et al. (2016) report that Kepler-80 hosts two faint companions to the South - one at a distance of 1.7 arcseconds, and one at a distance 15 https://exofop.ipac.caltech.edu/cfop.php of 3.9 arcseconds, both of which could in principle be the sources of the new transit signal we see.”
THE KEPLER FOLLOW-UP OBSERVATION PROGRAM. I. A CATALOG OF COMPANIONS TO KEPLER STARS FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGING (2016, methodology): “Kraus et al. (2016) employed adaptive optics imaging and also nonredundant aperture-mask interferometry at Keck with the NIRC2 instrument; the latter technique is limited only by the diffraction limit of the 10-m Keck telescope.”
Revised Stellar Properties of Kepler Targets for the Q1-17 (DR25) Transit Detection Run (2016, background): “…stellar properties, future catalog releases will attempt to take into account information from various high-resolution imaging programs (e.g. Adams et al. 2012; Dressing et al. 2014; Lillo-Box et al. 2014; Baranec et al. 2016; Furlan et al. 2016; Kraus et al. 2016) for stellar classifications.”
SOAR TESS Survey. I. Sculpting of TESS Planetary Systems by Stellar Companions (2019, methodology): “Similar to Kraus et al. (2016), the dearth of close binaries for planet hosts can be modeled by a simple two-parameter model using a suppression factor, Sbin, that cuts on at some semimajor axis value, acut.”
Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, background): “…the initial conditions (protoplanetary disk mass and structure), secular evolution (Kozai-Lidov interactions) and end products (dynamically relaxed planetary systems) of planet formation has important consequences for the galactic census of exoplanets (e.g., Wang et al. 2014; Kraus et al. 2016).”