Impact of stellar multiplicity on planetary systems I.

However, the difficulty of identifying planets in binary systems has left the magnitude of this effect uncertain; despite numerous theoretical hurdles to their formation and survival, at least some binary systems clearly host planets. We present high-resolution imaging of 382 Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) obtained using adaptive-optics imaging and nonredundant aperture-mask interferometry on the Keck II telescope.

Among the full sample of 506 candidate binary companions to KOIs, we super-resolve some binary systems to projected separations of <5au, showing that planets might form in these dynamically active environments. However, the full distribution of projected separations for our planet-host sample more broadly reveals a deep paucity of binary companions at solar-system scales. For a field binary population, we should have found 58 binary companions with projected separation {rho}<50au and mass ratio q>0.4; we instead only found 23 companions (a 4.6{sigma} deficit), many of which must be wider pairs that are only close in projection.