Long-term captures of low-mass intruders by binary stars

Abstract

Intensive computer simulations were made of three families of encounters between a binary star and a low-mass intruder which previous work indicated have a high probability of producing long-lived triple-star systems. For comparison, a fourth family which produces few long-lived trinaries was also studied. In the first two families, the binary components are equally massive and the closest approach of the intruder to the center of mass of the binary is about two times its semimajor axis, a/sub 0/. In Family 1, the orbit of the original binary is circular, e = 0, while in Family 2, e/sub 0/ = 0.95. In Family 3 one binary component is 100 times as massive as the other, the orbit is circular, and the low-mass intruder enters the binary at nearly zero impact parameter. The probability that the intruder is trapped for at least one revolution around the binary is 0.24, 0.46, and 0.51, respectively, for these three families of encounters. The fraction of the intruders surviving successive revolutions drops rapidly. However, one encounter in Family 1 and two in Family 3 resulted in the intruder making more than 300 revolutions around the inner binary before escaping. Some intruders remained bound for moremore » than 20 000 revolutions of the inner binary. The longest duration captures occur when the intruder is thrown into an orbit with a very large semimajor axis. About 20% of the encounters in the three families result in the intruder being thrown into an orbit with a semimajor axis a>100 a/sub 0/, while about 2% result in the intruder going into an orbit with a>1000 a/sub 0/. Intruders thrown into these large semimajor axis orbits have the best chance of having their orbits stabilized by passing stars.« less