94 Ceti: a triple star with a planet and dust disk

94 Ceti: a triple star with a planet and dust disc

Authors:

Wiegert et al

Abstract:

94 Ceti is a triple star system with a circumprimary gas giant planet and far-infrared excess. Such excesses around main sequence stars are likely due to debris discs, and are considered as signposts of planetary systems and, therefore, provide important insights into the configuration and evolution of the planetary system. Consequently, in order to learn more about the 94 Ceti system, we aim to precisely model the dust emission to fit its observed SED and to simulate its orbital dynamics. We interpret our APEX bolometric observations and complement them with archived Spitzer and Herschel bolometric data to explore the stellar excess and to map out background sources in the fields. Dynamical simulations and 3D radiative transfer calculations were used to constrain the debris disc configurations and model the dust emission. The best fit dust disc model for 94 Ceti implies a circumbinary disc around the secondary pair, limited by dynamics to radii smaller than 40 AU and with a grain size power-law distribution of ~a^-3.5. This model exhibits a dust-to-star luminosity ratio of 4.6+-0.4*10^-6. The system is dynamically stable and N-body symplectic simulations results are consistent with semi-analytical equations that describe orbits in binary systems. In the observations we also find tentative evidence of a circumtertiary ring that could be edge-on.