Tertiary companions to close spectroscopic binaries

We report the first results of a multi-epoch search for wide (separations greater than a few tens of AU), low-mass tertiary companions of a volume-limited sample of 118 known spectroscopic binaries within 30pc of the Sun, using the Two Micron All Sky Survey Point Source Catalog and follow-up observations with the KPNO and CTIO 4m telescopes. Note that this sample is not volume complete but volume limited, and, thus, there is incompleteness in our reported companion rates.

We are sensitive to common proper motion companions with separations from roughly 200AU to 10000AU (~10"-->~10'). From 77 sources followed-up to date, we recover 11 previously known tertiaries, 3 previously known candidate tertiaries, of which 2 are spectroscopically confirmed and 1 rejected, and 3 new candidates, of which 2 are confirmed and 1 rejected. This yields an estimated wide tertiary fraction of 19.5^+5.2^_-3.7_%.