A Possible Alignment Between the Orbits of Planetary Systems and their Visual Binary Companions

Christian, Sam; Vanderburg, Andrew; Becker, Juliette; Yahalomi, Daniel A.; Pearce, Logan; Zhou, George; Collins, Karen A.; Kraus, Adam L.; Stassun, Keivan G.; Beurs, Zoë L. de; Ricker, G.; Vanderspek, R.; Latham, David W.; Winn, Joshua N.; Winn, Joshua N.; Jenkins, Jon M.; Abe, Lyu; Agabi, Karim; Amado, P. J.; Baker, David; Barkaoui, Khalid; Benkhaldoun, Z.; Benni, Paul; Berberian, John; Berlind, P.; Bieryla, Allyson; Esparza-Borges, E.; Bowen, Michael; Brown, P. Lancaster; Buchhave, Lars A.; Burke, Christopher J.; Buttu, Marco; Cadieux, Charles; Caldwell, Douglas A.; Charbonneau, David; Chazov, Nikita; Chimaladinne, Sudhish; Collins, Kevin I.; Combs, Deven; Conti, Dennis M.; Crouzet, Nicolas; Leon, Jerome de; Deljookorani, Shila; Diamond, B.; Doyon, René; Dragomir, Diana; Dransfield, Georgina; Essack, Zahra; Evans, P.; Fukui, A.; Gan, Tianjun; Esquerdo, Gilbert A.; Gillon, M.; Girardin, Éric; Guerra, P.; Guillot, T.; Habich, Eleanor Kate K.; Henriksen, Andreea I; Hoch, Nora; Isogai, Keisuke; Jehin, Emmanuël; Jensen, Eric L. N.; Johnson, Marshall C.; Livingston, John H.; Kielkopf, John F.; Kim, Kingsley; Kawauchi, Kiyoe; Krushinsky, V.; Kunzle, Veronica; Laloum, Didier; Leger, Dominic; Lewin, Pablo; Mallia, F.; Massey, Bob; Mori, M.; McLeod, Kim K.; Mékarnia, D.; Mireles, Ismael; Mishevskiy, N.; Tamura, Motohide; Murgas, F.; Narita, Norio; Naves, R.; Nelson, Peter; Osborn, H.; Πάλλη, Ε.; Parviainen, H.; Plavchan, Peter; Pozuelos, F. J.; Rabus, M.; Relles, Howard M.; López, C.; Quinn, Samuel N.; Schmider, F. X.; Schlieder, Joshua E.; Schwarz, Richard P.; Shporer, Avi; Sibbald, L.R.; Srdoč, Gregor; Stibbards, Caitlin; Stickler, Hannah; Suárez, Olga; Stockdale, Chris; Tan, T. G.; Terada, Yuka; Triaud, A. H. M. J.; Tronsgaard, R.; Waalkes, William; Wang, Gavin; Watanabe, Noriharu; Marie-Sainte, Wenceslas; Wingham, Geof; Wittrock, Justin M.; Ziegler, Carl

doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ac517f

“…Like the DS Tuc AB system (Newton et al 2019), the orbit of the binary is aligned with that of the planetary orbit. This follows the trend from Christian et al (2022) that wide transiting planet-hosting binaries with separations between 100-700 au are preferentially found in edge-on orbits. Christian et al (2022) suggest that such trends may be due to the companions being formed from disk fragmentation, or the realignment of the inner disk by the perturbing outer companion.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…This follows the trend from Christian et al (2022) that wide transiting planet-hosting binaries with separations between 100-700 au are preferentially found in edge-on orbits. Christian et al (2022) suggest that such trends may be due to the companions being formed from disk fragmentation, or the realignment of the inner disk by the perturbing outer companion. The efforts by TESS follow-up teams to provide diffraction limited imaging of a majority of planet candidates, such as HIP 94235, will help probe the continuation of this trend to <100 au separations.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

A Mini-Neptune from TESS and CHEOPS Around the 120 Myr Old AB Dor Member HIP 94235

Zhou¹,

Wirth²,

Huang³

et al. 2022

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The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission has enabled discoveries of the brightest transiting planet systems around young stars. These systems are the benchmarks for testing theories of planetary evolution. We report the discovery of a mini-Neptune transiting a bright star in the AB Doradus moving group. HIP 94235 (TOI-4399, TIC 464646604) is a V mag = 8.31 G-dwarf hosting a 3.00 − 0.28 + 0.32 R ⊕ mini-Neptune in a 7.7 day period orbit. HIP 94235 is part of the AB Doradus moving group, one of the youngest and closest associations. Due to its youth, the host star exhibits significant photometric spot modulation, lithium absorption, and X-ray emission. Three 0.06% transits were observed during Sector 27 of the TESS Extended Mission, though these transit signals are dwarfed by the 2% peak-to-peak photometric variability exhibited by the host star. Follow-up observations with the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite confirmed the transit signal and prevented the erosion of the transit ephemeris. HIP 94235 is part of a 50 au G-M binary system. We make use of diffraction limited observations spanning 11 yr, and astrometric accelerations from Hipparcos and Gaia, to constrain the orbit of HIP 94235 B. HIP 94235 is one of the tightest stellar binaries to host an inner planet. As part of a growing sample of bright, young planet systems, HIP 94235 b is ideal for follow-up transit observations, such as those that investigate the evaporative processes driven by high-energy radiation that may sculpt the valleys and deserts in the Neptune population.

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“…Indeed, observational studies have shown that the occurrence rate of exoplanets in stellar binaries tends to be smaller than those of wider binaries or single stars (e.g., Wang et al 2014;Kraus et al 2016;Moe & Kratter 2021;Ziegler et al 2021). Moreover, the orbits of planet-hosting stellar binaries appear to be statistically aligned with those of the planets, while orbital inclinations of binaries without planets are likely isotropic (e.g., Behmard et al 2022;Christian et al 2022;Dupuy et al 2022). The orbital alignment between binaries and planets could be primordial if both stellar components and the planets all form within the same massive disk or hierarchical cloud fragmentation that preserves orbital angular momenta (e.g., Sigalotti et al 2018;Tokovinin 2018;Christian et al 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The McDonald Accelerating Stars Survey: Architecture of the Ancient Five-planet Host System Kepler-444

Zhang

¹

,

Bowler

²

,

Dupuy

³

et al. 2023

Self Cite

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We present the latest and most precise characterization of the architecture for the ancient (≈11 Gyr) Kepler-444 system, which is composed of a K0 primary star (Kepler-444 A) hosting five transiting planets and a tight M-type spectroscopic binary (Kepler-444 BC) with an A–BC projected separation of 66 au. We have measured the system’s relative astrometry using the adaptive optics imaging from Keck/NIRC2 and Kepler-444 A’s radial velocities from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope and reanalyzed relative radial velocities between BC and A from Keck/HIRES. We also include the Hipparcos-Gaia astrometric acceleration and all published astrometry and radial velocities in an updated orbit analysis of BC’s barycenter. These data greatly extend the time baseline of the monitoring and lead to significant updates to BC’s barycentric orbit compared to previous work, including a larger semimajor axis ( a = 52.2 − 2.7 + 3.3 au), a smaller eccentricity (e = 0.55 ± 0.05), and a more precise inclination ( i = 85 .° 4 − 0 .° 4 + 0 .° 3 ). We have also derived the first dynamical masses of B and C components. Our results suggest that Kepler-444 A’s protoplanetary disk was likely truncated by BC to a radius of ≈8 au, which resolves the previously noticed tension between Kepler-444 A’s disk mass and planet masses. Kepler-444 BC’s barycentric orbit is likely aligned with those of A’s five planets, which might be primordial or a consequence of dynamical evolution. The Kepler-444 system demonstrates that compact multiplanet systems residing in hierarchical stellar triples can form at early epochs of the universe and survive their secular evolution throughout cosmic time.

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“…We applied this method to twin wide binaries and showed that they are highly eccentric (Hwang et al 2022a), suggesting that they were formed at smaller separations and their orbits were widened by subsequent interaction with the environments (El-Badry et al 2019). If one of the component star is an eclipsing binary or has a transiting planet, then v-r angles can constrain the orbital alignments between the outer companions and the inner eclipsing or transiting systems (Behmard et al 2022;Cañas et al 2022;Christian et al 2022).…”

Section: Hwangmentioning

confidence: 99%

The mystery in Gaia DR3 triples: occurrence rates, orientations, and eccentricities of wide tertiaries around close binaries

Hwang¹

2022

Preprint

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The formation of close binaries has been an open question for decades. A large fraction of close binaries are in triple systems, suggesting that their formation may be associated with the Kozai-Lidov mechanism. However, this picture remains under debate because the configurations of many observed triples are unlikely to trigger the Kozai-Lidov mechanism. In this paper, we use the close binary samples, including eclipsing, spectroscopic, and astrometric binaries, from Gaia Data Release 3 to investigate the mysterious connection between inner binaries and their wide tertiaries. We show that the wide tertiary (at 10 3 -10 4 AU) fraction increases with decreasing orbital periods of the inner binaries. Compared to the field wide binary fraction, the wide tertiary fraction is 2.28 ± 0.10 times higher for eclipsing binaries (a median orbital period of 0.44 day) and 0.65 ± 0.03 times lower for astrometric binaries (a median orbital period of 537 days). The separation distribution of wide tertiaries is similar to wide binaries, with a tentative excess at ∼ 10 4 AU for tertiaries of eclipsing binaries. Using the v-r angle distributions, we show that the wide tertiaries are consistent with isotropic orientations with respect to the inner binaries. The inferred eccentricity distribution of wide tertiaries is close to thermal (f (e) ∝ e), similar to wide binaries at similar separations. The dynamical unfolding scenario is disfavored because it predicts highly eccentric wide tertiaries, which is inconsistent with our findings. For the Kozai-Lidov mechanism to be effective for wide tertiaries at > 10 3 AU, the initial separations of the inner binaries need to be > 3 AU. Future theoretical investigations are needed to explore the parameter space at these large initial separations and large tertiary separations.

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A Possible Alignment Between the Orbits of Planetary Systems and their Visual Binary Companions

Cited by 21 publications

References 121 publications

A Mini-Neptune from TESS and CHEOPS Around the 120 Myr Old AB Dor Member HIP 94235

A Mini-Neptune from TESS and CHEOPS Around the 120 Myr Old AB Dor Member HIP 94235

The McDonald Accelerating Stars Survey: Architecture of the Ancient Five-planet Host System Kepler-444

The mystery in Gaia DR3 triples: occurrence rates, orientations, and eccentricities of wide tertiaries around close binaries

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