THE HIGH-ORDER MULTIPLICITY OF UNUSUALLY WIDE M DWARF BINARIES: ELEVEN NEW TRIPLE AND QUADRUPLE SYSTEMS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
M dwarfs in extremely wide-binary systems are very rare, and may thus have different formation processes from those found as single stars or close binaries in the field. In this paper, we search for close companions to a new sample of 36 extremely wide M dwarf binaries covering a spectral type range of M1–M5 and a separation range of 600–6500 AU. We discover 10 new triple systems and one new quadruple system. We carefully account for selection effects including proper motion, magnitude limits, the detection of close binaries in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and other sample biases. The bias-corrected total high-order-multiple fraction is 45 +18 −16% and the bias-corrected incidence of quadruple systems is <5%, both statistically compatible with that found for the more common close M dwarf multiple systems. Almost all the detected companions have similar masses to their primaries, although two very low mass companions, including a candidate brown dwarf, are found at relatively large separations. We find that the close-binary separation distribution is strongly peaked toward <30 AU separations. There is marginally significant evidence for a change in high-order M dwarf multiplicity with binding energy and total mass. We also find 2σ evidence of an unexpected increased high-order-multiple fraction for the widest targets in our survey, with a high-order-multiple fraction of 21 +17 −7% for systems with separations up to 2000 AU, compared to 77 +9 −22% for systems with separations >4000 AU. These results suggest that the very widest M dwarf binary systems need higher masses to form or to survive.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".