David Rodríguez
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
 

"Does the Existence of a Debris Disk Depend on the Multiplicity of the Star it Orbits?"
 

While about half the stars in the sky are part of multiple systems, studies concerning debris disks have dealt primarily with single stars. To address this issue we have collected published information and are making our own measurements on a sample of debris disks stars to determine if these stars are multiples. Our sample consists of 113 main-sequence stars (ages older than 10 Myr) with known infrared excesses. This includes stars within 100 pc and ranges from spectral types B8 to K2, though most (89) are A or F stars. Most of these excesses were discovered with IRAS and many have been confirmed with MIPS on Spitzer. With this information we will obtain a measure of how often binary stars contain debris disks and determine whether properties such as the average dust temperature or L(IR)/L(star) are sensitive to the presence of companions.