Discovery of a Very Low Mass Triple with Late-M and T Dwarf Components: LP 704-48/SDSS J0006-0852AB

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of the lowest-mass confirmed triple system with a tight M8.5/T5 binary and a distant M7 companion, challenging current star formation models and suggesting substellar tertiaries may be common.

Contribution

It presents the first confirmed very low mass triple system with detailed orbital and spectral analysis, highlighting its rarity and implications for formation theories.

Findings

System is the lowest-mass confirmed triple known.

Orbital period of the tight binary is approximately 147.6 days.

Current formation models cannot explain such a system.

Abstract

We report the identification of the M9 dwarf SDSS J000649.16-085246.3 as a spectral binary and radial velocity variable with components straddling the hydrogen burning mass limit. Low-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy reveals spectral features indicative of a T dwarf companion, and spectral template fitting yields component types of M8.5\pm0.5 and T5\pm1. High-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy with Keck/NIRSPEC reveals pronounced radial velocity variations with a semi-amplitude of 8.2\pm0.4 km/s. From these we determine an orbital period of 147.6\pm1.5 days and eccentricity of 0.10\pm0.07, making SDSS J0006-0852AB the third tightest very low mass binary known. This system is also found to have a common proper motion companion, the inactive M7 dwarf LP 704-48, at a projected separation of 820\pm120 AU. The lack of H-alpha emission in both M dwarf components indicates that this system is relatively old, as confirmed by evolutionary model analysis of the tight binary. LP 704-48/SDSS J0006-0852AB is the lowest-mass confirmed triple identified to date, and one of only seven candidate and confirmed triples with total masses below 0.3 Msun currently known. We show that current star and brown dwarf formation models cannot produce triple systems like LP 704-48/SDSS J0006-0852AB, and we rule out Kozai-Lidov perturbations and tidal circularization as a viable mechanism to shrink the inner orbit. The similarities between this system and the recently uncovered low-mass eclipsing triples NLTT 41135AB/41136 and LHS 6343ABC suggest that substellar tertiaries may be common in wide M dwarf pairs.