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

Sam Christian , Andrew Vanderburg , Juliette Becker , Daniel A. Yahalomi , Logan Pearce , George Zhou , Karen A. Collins , Adam L. Kraus , Keivan G. Stassun , Zoe de Beurs , George R. Ricker , Roland K. Vanderspek , David W. Latham , Joshua N. Winn , S. Seager , Jon M. Jenkins , Lyu Abe (1) , Karim Agabi (1) , Pedro J. Amado , David Baker , Khalid Barkaoui , Zouhair Benkhaldoun , Paul Benni , John Berberian , Perry Berlind , Allyson Bieryla , Emma Esparza-Borges , Michael Bowen , Peyton Brown , Lars A. Buchhave , Christopher J. Burke , Marco Buttu , Charles Cadieux , Douglas A. Caldwell , David Charbonneau , Nikita Chazov , Sudhish Chimaladinne , Kevin I. Collins , Deven Combs , Dennis M. Conti , Nicolas Crouzet , Jerome P. de Leon , Shila Deljookorani , Brendan Diamond , René Doyon , Diana Dragomir , Georgina Dransfield , Zahra Essack , Phil Evans , Akihiko Fukui , Tianjun Gan , Gilbert A. Esquerdo , Michaël Gillon , Eric Girardin , Pere Guerra , Tristan Guillot (1) , Eleanor Kate K. Habich , Andreea Henriksen , Nora Hoch , Keisuke I. Isogai , Emmanuël Jehin , Eric L. N. Jensen , Marshall C. Johnson , John H. Livingston , John F. Kielkopf , Kingsley Kim , Kiyoe Kawauchi , Vadim Krushinsky , Veronica Kunzle , Didier Laloum (2) , Dominic Leger , Pablo Lewin , Franco Mallia , Bob Massey , Mayuko Mori , Kim K. Mcleod , Djamel Mékarnia (1) , Ismael Mireles , Nikolay Mishevskiy , Motohide Tamura , Felipe Murgas , Norio Narita , Ramon Naves , Peter Nelson , Hugh P. Osborn , Enric Palle , Hannu Parviainen , Peter Plavchan , Francisco J. Pozuelos , Markus Rabus , Howard M. Relles , Cristina Rodríguez López , Samuel N. Quinn , Francois-Xavier Schmider (1) , Joshua E. Schlieder , Richard P. Schwarz , Avi Shporer , Laurie Sibbald , Gregor Srdoc , Caitlin Stibbards , Hannah Stickler , Olga Suarez (1) , Chris Stockdale , Thiam-Guan Tan , Yuka Terada , Amaury Triaud , Rene Tronsgaard , William C. Waalkes , Gavin Wang , Noriharu Watanabe , Marie-Sainte Wenceslas , Geof Wingham , Justin Wittrock , Carl Ziegler

1 OCA - Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
2 SAF - Société Astronomique de France

Astronomers do not have a complete picture of the effects of wide-binary companions (semimajor axes greater than 100 au) on the formation and evolution of exoplanets. We investigate these effects using new data from Gaia Early Data Release 3 and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission to characterize wide-binary systems with transiting exoplanets. We identify a sample of 67 systems of transiting exoplanet candidates (with well-determined, edge-on orbital inclinations) that reside in wide visual binary systems. We derive limits on orbital parameters for the wide-binary systems and measure the minimum difference in orbital inclination between the binary and planet orbits. We determine that there is statistically significant difference in the inclination distribution of wide-binary systems with transiting planets compared to a control sample, with the probability that the two distributions are the same being 0.0037. This implies that there is an overabundance of planets in binary systems whose orbits are aligned with those of the binary. The overabundance of aligned systems appears to primarily have semimajor axes less than 700 au. We investigate some effects that could cause the alignment and conclude that a torque caused by a misaligned binary companion on the protoplanetary disk is the most promising explanation.

Keywords: Star-planet interactions; Circumstellar disks; Exoplanet evolution; Wide binary stars; Visual binary stars

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

Sam Christian, Andrew Vanderburg, Juliette Becker, Daniel A. Yahalomi, Logan Pearce, et al.. A Possible Alignment Between the Orbits of Planetary Systems and their Visual Binary Companions. The Astronomical Journal, 2022, 163, ⟨10.3847/1538-3881/ac517f⟩. ⟨insu-03656895⟩