An Aligned Very-Low-Mass Star Orbiting an M dwarf and Obliquity Patterns Across Giant Planets, Brown Dwarfs, and Binary Stars

TL;DR

This paper presents the first obliquity measurement of a double M dwarf system using the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect and explores obliquity patterns across various celestial populations, revealing similarities and differences in their dynamical histories.

Contribution

It provides the first obliquity measurement for a double M dwarf system and analyzes obliquity trends across giant planets, brown dwarfs, and binary stars.

Findings

The primary star's spin axis is well aligned with its low-mass stellar companion.

Aligned orbits are more common around cooler host stars and wide-orbit companions.

No significant correlation between obliquity and orbital eccentricity across populations.

Abstract

Stellar obliquity serves as a key diagnostic for tracing the dynamical evolution of bound systems-from giant planets and brown dwarfs to stellar binaries-revealing whether these diverse populations share analogous histories. Here, we report the first obliquity measurement for a double M dwarf system, determined via the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. The spin axis of the primary star, TOI-5375 ($M_\ast=0.62\pm0.02\,M_\odot$), is well aligned with the orbit of its low-mass stellar companion ($M_c=84.8\pm1.5\, M_J$, $\rm P=1.72\,days$) with a projected obliquity of $\lambda=-13.5_{-13.8}^{+12.4}\,^{\circ}$ and a true 3D obliquity of $\psi=37.5_{-13.4}^{+10.6}\,^{\circ}$. The result indicates that the system either formed with a primordially aligned configuration or has undergone tidal realignment. We further investigate obliquity patterns across giant planets, brown dwarfs and binary stars. It turns out that a few obliquity trends observed in giant planets also tentatively exhibit in the latter two higher-mass populations: 1) well-aligned orbits are preferentially found around cooler host stars ($T_{\rm eff}\leq 6250\,K$); 2) wide-orbit ($a/R_\ast\geq 10$) companions are predominantly aligned; 3) no significant correlation shows up between obliquity and orbital eccentricity in any of the companion classes. By modeling $|\lambda|$ with a two-component Gaussian distribution, we find that the low-$|\lambda|$ components of binary stars and brown dwarfs are more concentrated near zero than giant planets while the high-$|\lambda|$ components of brown dwarfs and binaries remain unclear due to the small sample size.