A Possible Alignment Between the Orbits of Planetary Systems and their Visual Binary Companions
Creators: name: Christian, Sam
name: Vanderburg, Andrew
name: Becker, Juliette
name: Yahalomi, Daniel A.
name: Pearce, Logan
name: Zhou, George
name: Collins, Karen A.
name: Kraus, Adam L.
name: Stassun, Keivan G.
name: de Beurs, Zoe
name: Ricker, George R.
name: Vanderspek, Roland K.
name: Latham, David W.
name: Winn, Joshua N.
name: Seager, S.
name: Jenkins, Jon M.
name: Abe, Lyu
name: Agabi, Karim
name: Amado, Pedro J.
name: Baker, David
name: Barkaoui, Khalid
name: Benkhaldoun, Zouhair
name: Benni, Paul
name: Berberian, John
name: Berlind, Perry
name: Bieryla, Allyson
name: Esparza-Borges, Emma
name: Bowen, Michael
name: Brown, Peyton
name: Buchhave, Lars A.
name: Burke, Christopher J.
name: Buttu, Marco
name: Cadieux, Charles
name: Caldwell, Douglas A.
name: Charbonneau, David
name: Chazov, Nikita
name: Chimaladinne, Sudhish
name: Collins, Kevin I.
name: Combs, Deven
name: Conti, Dennis M.
name: Crouzet, Nicolas
name: de Leon, Jerome P.
name: Deljookorani, Shila
name: Diamond, Brendan
name: Doyon, René
name: Dragomir, Diana
name: Dransfield, Georgina
name: Essack, Zahra
name: Evans, Phil
name: Fukui, Akihiko
name: Gan, Tianjun
name: Esquerdo, Gilbert A.
name: Gillon, Michaël
name: Girardin, Eric
name: Guerra, Pere
name: Guillot, Tristan
name: Habich, Eleanor Kate K.
name: Henriksen, Andreea
name: Hoch, Nora
name: Isogai, Keisuke I
name: Jehin, Emmanuël
name: Jensen, Eric L. N.
name: Johnson, Marshall C.
name: Livingston, John H.
name: Kielkopf, John F.
name: Kim, Kingsley
name: Kawauchi, Kiyoe
name: Krushinsky, Vadim
name: Kunzle, Veronica
name: Laloum, Didier
name: Leger, Dominic
name: Lewin, Pablo
name: Mallia, Franco
name: Massey, Bob
name: Mori, Mayuko
name: McLeod, Kim K.
name: Mékarnia, Djamel
name: Mireles, Ismael
name: Mishevskiy, Nikolay
name: Tamura, Motohide
name: Murgas, Felipe
name: Narita, Norio
name: Naves, Ramon
name: Nelson, Peter
name: Osborn, Hugh P.
name: Palle, Enric
name: Parviainen, Hannu
name: Plavchan, Peter
name: Pozuelos, Francisco J.
name: Rabus, Markus
name: Relles, Howard M.
name: López, Cristina Rodríguez
name: Quinn, Samuel N.
name: Schmider, Francois-Xavier
name: Schlieder, Joshua E.
name: Schwarz, Richard P.
name: Shporer, Avi
name: Sibbald, Laurie
name: Srdoc, Gregor
name: Stibbards, Caitlin
name: Stickler, Hannah
name: Suarez, Olga
name: Stockdale, Chris
name: Tan, Thiam-Guan
name: Terada, Yuka
name: Triaud, Amaury
name: Tronsgaard, Rene
name: Waalkes, William C.
name: Wang, Gavin
name: Watanabe, Noriharu
name: Wenceslas, Marie-Sainte
name: Wingham, Geof
name: Wittrock, Justin
name: Ziegler, Carl
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
subject: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: 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 EDR3 and the TESS 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.
description: 30 pages, 19 figures, 2 csv files included in Arxiv source; accepted for publication in AJ