We present the results of the second year of exoplanet candidate host speckle observations from the SOAR TESS survey. We find 89 of the 589 newly observed TESS planet candidate hosts have companions within 3arcsec, resulting in light curve dilution,
that if not accounted for leads to underestimated planetary radii. We combined these observations with those from paper I to search for evidence of the impact binary stars have on planetary systems. Removing the quarter of the targets observed identified as false-positive planet detections, we find that transiting planet are suppressed by nearly a factor-of-seven in close solar-type binaries, nearly twice the suppression previously reported. The result on planet occurrence rates that are based on magnitude limited surveys is an overestimation by a factor of two if binary suppression is not taken into account. We also find tentative evidence for similar close binary suppression of planets in M-dwarf systems. Lastly, we find that the high rates of widely separated companions to hot Jupiter hosts previously reported was likely a result of false-positive contamination in our sample.
TESS is finding transiting planet candidates around bright, nearby stars across the entire sky. The large field-of-view, however, results in low spatial resolution, therefore multiple stars contribute to almost every TESS light curve. High-angular re
solution imaging can detect the previously unknown companions to planetary candidate hosts that dilute the transit depths, lead to host star ambiguity, and in some cases are the source of false-positive transit signals. We use speckle imaging on SOAR to search for companions to 542 TESS planet candidate hosts in the Southern sky. We provide correction factors for the 117 systems with resolved companions due to photometric contamination. The contamination in TESS due to close binaries is similar to that found in surveys of Kepler planet candidates. For the solar-type population, we find a deep deficit of close binary systems with projected stellar separations less than 100 AU among planet candidate hosts (44 observed binaries compared to 124 expected based on field binary statistics). The close binary suppression among TESS planet candidate hosts is similar to that seen for the more distant Kepler population. We also find a large surplus of the TESS planet candidates in wide binary systems, detected in both SOAR and Gaia DR2 (119 observed binaries compared to 77 expected). These wide binaries host almost exclusively giant planets, however, suggesting orbital migration, caused by perturbations from the stellar companion, may lead to planet-planet scattering and suppress the population of small planets in wide binaries. Both trends are also apparent in the M-dwarf planet candidate hosts.
We use the Robo-AO survey of Kepler planetary candidate host stars, the largest adaptive optics survey yet performed, to measure the recovery rate of close stellar binaries in Gaia DR2. We find that Gaia recovers binaries down to 1 at magnitude contr
asts as large as 6; closer systems are not resolved, regardless of secondary brightness. Gaia DR2 binary detection does not have a strong dependence on the orientation of the stellar pairs. We find 177 nearby stars to Kepler planetary candidate host stars in Gaia DR2 that were not detected in the Robo-AO survey, almost all of which are faint (G>20); the remainder were largely targets observed by Robo-AO in poor conditions. If the primary star is the host, the impact on the radii estimates of planet candidates in these systems is likely minimal; many of these faint stars, however, could be faint eclipsing binaries that are the source of a false positive planetary transit signal. With Robo-AO and Gaia combined, we find that 18.7% of Kepler planet candidate hosts have nearby stars within 4. We also find 36 nearby stars in Gaia DR2 around 35 planetary candidate host stars detected with K2. The nearby star fraction rate for K2 planetary candidates is significantly lower than that for the primary Kepler mission. The binary recovery rate of Gaia will improve initial radius estimates of future TESS planet candidates significantly, however ground-based high-resolution follow-up observations are still needed for precise characterization and confirmation. The sensitivity of Gaia to closely separated binaries is expected to improve in later data releases.
The Kepler light curves used to detect thousands of planetary candidates are susceptible to dilution due to blending with previously unknown nearby stars. With the automated laser adaptive optics instrument, Robo-AO, we have observed 620 nearby stars
around 3857 planetary candidates host stars. Many of the nearby stars, however, are not bound to the KOI. In this paper, we quantify the association probability between each KOI and detected nearby stars through several methods. Galactic stellar models and the observed stellar density are used to estimate the number and properties of unbound stars. We estimate the spectral type and distance to 145 KOIs with nearby stars using multi-band observations from Robo-AO and Keck-AO. We find most nearby stars within 1 of a Kepler planetary candidate are likely bound, in agreement with past studies. We use likely bound stars as well as the precise stellar parameters from the California Kepler Survey to search for correlations between stellar binarity and planetary properties. No significant difference between the binarity fraction of single and multiple planet systems is found, and planet hosting stars follow similar binarity trends as field stars, many of which likely host their own non-aligned planets. We find that hot Jupiters are ~4x more likely than other planets to reside in a binary star system. We correct the radius estimates of the planet candidates in characterized systems and find that for likely bound systems, the estimated planetary candidate radii will increase on average by a factor of 1.77, if either star is equally likely to host the planet. We find that the planetary radius gap is robust to the impact of dilution, and find an intriguing 95%-confidence discrepancy between the radius distribution of small planets in single and binary systems.
We present the overall statistical results from the Robo-AO Kepler planetary candidate survey, comprising of 3857 high-angular resolution observations of planetary candidate systems with Robo-AO, an automated laser adaptive optics system. These obser
vations reveal previously unknown nearby stars blended with the planetary candidate host star which alter the derived planetary radii or may be the source of an astrophysical false positive transit signal. In the first three papers in the survey, we detected 440 nearby stars around 3313 planetary candidate host stars. In this paper, we present observations of 532 planetary candidate host stars, detecting 94 companions around 88 stars; 84 of these companions have not previously been observed in high-resolution. We also report 50 more-widely-separated companions near 715 targets previously observed by Robo-AO. We derive corrected planetary radius estimates for the 814 planetary candidates in systems with a detected nearby star. If planetary candidates are equally likely to orbit the primary or secondary star, the radius estimates for planetary candidates in systems with likely bound nearby stars increase by a factor of 1.54, on average. We find that 35 previously-believed rocky planet candidates are likely not rocky due to the presence of nearby stars. From the combined data sets from the complete Robo-AO KOI survey, we find that 14.5pm0.5% of planetary candidate hosts have a nearby star with 4, while 1.2% have two nearby stars and 0.08% have three. We find that 16% of Earth-sized, 13% of Neptune-sized, 14% of Saturn-sized, and 19% of Jupiter-sized planet candidates have detected nearby stars.
The Southern Robotic Adaptive Optics (SRAO) instrument will bring the proven high-efficiency capabilities of Robo-AO to the Southern-Hemisphere, providing the unique capability to image with high-angular-resolution thousands of targets per year acros
s the entire sky. Deployed on the modern 4.1m SOAR telescope located on Cerro Tololo, the NGS-AO system will use an innovative dual-knife-edge wavefront sensor, similar to a pyramid sensor, to enable guiding on targets down to V=16 with diffraction limited resolution in the NIR. The dual-knife-edge wavefront sensor can be up to two orders of magnitude less costly than custom glass pyramids, with similar wavefront error sensitivity and minimal chromatic aberrations. SRAO is capable of observing hundreds of targets a night through automation, allowing confirmation and characterization of the large number of exoplanets produced by current and future missions.
The Robo-AO Kepler Planetary Candidate Survey is observing every Kepler planet candidate host star (KOI) with laser adaptive optics imaging to hunt for blended nearby stars which may be physically associated companions. With the unparalleled efficien
cy provided by the first fully robotic adaptive optics system, we perform the critical search for nearby stars (0.15 to 4.0 separation with contrasts up to 6 magnitudes) that dilute the observed planetary transit signal, contributing to inaccurate planetary characteristics or astrophysical false positives. We present 3313 high resolution observations of Kepler planetary hosts from 2012-2015, discovering 479 nearby stars. We measure an overall nearby star probability rate of 14.5pm0.8%. With this large data set, we are uniquely able to explore broad correlations between multiple star systems and the properties of the planets which they host, providing insight into the formation and evolution of planetary systems in our galaxy. Several KOIs of particular interest will be discussed, including possible quadruple star systems hosting planets and updated properties for possible rocky planets orbiting with in their stars habitable zone.
The Robo-AO textit{Kepler} Planetary Candidate Survey is observing every textit{Kepler} planet candidate host star with laser adaptive optics imaging to search for blended nearby stars, which may be physically associated companions and/or responsible
for transit false positives. We present in this paper the results of our search for stars nearby 1629 textit{Kepler} planet candidate hosts. With survey sensitivity to objects as close as $sim$0.15 and magnitude differences $Delta$m$le$6, we find 223 stars in the vicinity of 206 target KOIs; 209 of these nearby stars have not previously been imaged in high resolution. We measure an overall nearby-star probability for textit{Kepler} planet candidates of 12.6%$pm$0.9% at separations between 0.15 and 4.0. Particularly interesting KOI systems are discussed, including 23 stars with detected companions which host rocky, habitable zone candidates, and five new candidate planet-hosting quadruple star systems. We explore the broad correlations between planetary systems and stellar binarity using the combined dataset of Baranec et al. (2016) and this paper. Our previous 2$sigma$ result of a low binary fraction of KOIs hosting close-in giant planets is less apparent in this larger dataset. We also find a significant correlation between binary fraction and KOI number, suggesting possible variation between early and late textit{Kepler} data releases.
We initiated the Robo-AO Kepler Planetary Candidate Survey in 2012 to observe each Kepler exoplanet candidate host star with high-angular-resolution visible-light laser-adaptive-optics imaging. Our goal is to find nearby stars lying in Keplers photom
etric apertures that are responsible for the relatively high probability of false-positive exoplanet detections and that cause underestimates of the size of transit radii. Our comprehensive survey will also shed light on the effects of stellar multiplicity on exoplanet properties and will identify rare exoplanetary architectures. In this second part of our ongoing survey, we observed an additional 969 Kepler planet candidate hosts and we report blended stellar companions up to $Delta m approx 6$ that contribute to Keplers measured light curves. We found 203 companions within $sim$4 of 181 of the Kepler stars, of which 141 are new discoveries. We measure the nearby-star probability for this sample of Kepler planet candidate host stars to be 10.6% $pm$ 1.1% at angular separations up to 2.5, significantly higher than the 7.4% $pm$ 1.0% probability discovered in our initial sample of 715 stars; we find the probability increases to 17.6% $pm$ 1.5% out to a separation of 4.0. The median position of KOIs observed in this survey are 1.1$^{circ}$ closer to the galactic plane which may account for some of the nearby-star probability enhancement. We additionally detail 50 Keck adaptive optics images of Robo-AO observed KOIs in order to confirm 37 companions detected at a $<5sigma$ significance level and to obtain additional infrared photometry on higher-significance detected companions.
Cool subdwarfs are the oldest members of the low mass stellar population. Mostly present in the galactic halo, subdwarfs are characterized by their low metallicity. Measuring their binary fraction and comparing it to solar metallicity stars could giv
e key insights into the star formation process early in the history of the Milky Way. However, because of their low luminosity and relative rarity in the solar neighborhood, binarity surveys of cool subdwarfs have suffered from small sample sizes and incompleteness. Previous surveys have suggested that the binary fraction of red subdwarfs is much lower than for their main sequence cousins. Using the highly efficient RoboAO system, we present the largest yet high-resolution survey of subdwarfs, sensitive to angular separations, down to 0.15 arcsec, and contrast ratios, up to 6 magnitude difference, invisible in past surveys. Of 344 target cool subdwarfs, 40 are in multiple systems, 16 newly discovered, for a binary fraction of 11.6 percent and 1.8 percent error. We also discovered 6 triple star systems for a triplet fraction of 1.7 percent and 0.7 percent error. Comparisons to similar surveys of solar metallicity dwarf stars gives a 3 sigma disparity in luminosity between companion stars, with subdwarfs displaying a shortage of low contrast companions.
