A complete census of planet-hosting binaries

TL;DR

This paper compiles the most comprehensive database to date of known planet-hosting binary systems, analyzes their properties, and investigates how binarity affects planet formation, revealing a significant deficit of close binaries among planet hosts.

Contribution

It presents a new, extensive census of 759 planet-hosting systems, significantly expanding previous data and analyzing the impact of binarity on planet formation.

Findings

The distribution of binary separations peaks around 500 au for planet hosts.

The observed deficit of close-in binaries among planet hosts cannot be explained solely by observational biases.

The multiplicity fraction of planet-hosting stars within 500 pc is about 22.5%, roughly half that of field stars.

Abstract

Estimating the effect binarity can have on planet-formation is of crucial importance, as almost half of field stars reside in multiple systems. One effective way to assess this effect is to get an accurate picture of the population of planet-hosting binaries and compare its characteristics to that of field star binaries. We construct an extensive database, collected from intensive literature exploration, to achieve a complete census of all planet-hosting binaries known to date. Despite the heterogeneous character of the different surveys this database is built on, and the biases and selection effects that unavoidably affect any sample of planet-hosting binaries, we look for statistically significant trends and correlations within our sample. Our database provides the characteristics for 759 systems (among which 31 circumbinaries), which is an increase by a factor of 9 with respect to the previous complete census of planet-hosting binaries. Of the 728 S-type systems, 651 are binaries, 73 are triples and 4 are quadruples. The raw distribution of planet-hosting binary separations peaks around 500\,au instead of 50\,au for field binaries. By analyzing the distribution of on-sky angular separations as a function of distance $d_b$ to the systems we argue that the observed deficit of planet-hosting close-in binaries cannot be explained solely by observational biases. Likewise, by exploring how multiplicity fractions among planet-hosts vary with $d_b$ we suggest that the subsample of known planet-hosting binaries at $<500\,$pc is not bias-dominated (but not bias-free). In this $<500\,$pc domain, the multiplicity fraction of planet-hosting stars is $\sim22.5\%$, approximately half of the value for field stars, and the deficit of planet-hosting binaries extends to separations of $\sim500\,$au, giving an approximate estimate of the detrimental effect binarity has on planet-formation