{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/10000-resolved-triples-from-gaia-empirical","title":"10,000 Resolved Triples from Gaia: Empirical Constraints on Triple Star Populations","arxiv_id":"2506.16513","date":"2025-06-19","proceeding":null,"authors":["Cheyanne Shariat","Kareem El-Badry","Smadar Naoz"],"abstract":"We present a catalog of $\\sim 10,000$ resolved triple star systems within 500 pc of the Sun, constructed using Gaia data. The triples include main-sequence, red giant, and white dwarf components spanning separations of 10 to 50,000 au. A well-characterized selection function allows us to constrain intrinsic demographics of the triple star population. We find that (a) all systems are compatible with being hierarchical and dynamically stable; (b) mutual orbital inclinations are isotropic for wide triples but show modest alignment as the systems become more compact; (c) primary masses follow a Kroupa initial mass function weighted by the triple fraction; (d) inner binary orbital periods, eccentricities, and mass ratios mirror those of isolated binaries, including a pronounced twin excess (mass ratios greater than 0.95) out to separations of 1000+ au, suggesting a common formation pathway; (e) tertiary mass ratios follow a power-law distribution with slope $-1.4$; (f) tertiary orbits are consistent with a log-normal period distribution and thermal eccentricities, subject to dynamical stability. Informed by these observations, we develop a publicly available prescription for generating mock triple star populations. Finally, we estimate the catalog's completeness and infer the intrinsic triple fraction, which rises steadily with primary mass: from $5\\%$ at $\\lesssim 0.5\\,{\\rm M_\\odot}$ to $35\\%$ at $2\\,{\\rm M_\\odot}$. The public catalog provides a robust testbed for models of triple star formation and evolution.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16513v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.16513v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"10000-resolved-triples-from-gaia-empirical","repo_url":"https://github.com/cheyanneshariat/gaia_triples","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}