A new approach for predicting the stability of hierarchical triple systems. I. Coplanar cases

Abstract Hierarchical triple systems play a crucial role in various astrophysical contexts, and therefore the understanding of their stability is important. Traditional empirical stability criteria rely on a threshold value of Q, the ratio between the outer orbit’s pericenter distance and the inner orbit’s semi-major axis. However, determining a single critical value of Q is impossible because there is a range of values of Q for which both stable and unstable systems exist, referred to as the mixed region. In this study, we introduce a novel method to assess the stability of triple systems within this mixed region. We numerically integrate equal-mass, coplanar hierarchical triples within the mixed region. By performing Fourier analysis of the time evolution of the semi-major axis ratio during the first 1000 inner orbital periods of the systems, we find notable features in stable systems: if the main peaks are periodically spaced in the frequency domain and the continuous components and irregularly spaced peaks are small, the system tends to be stable. This observation indicates that the evolution of stable triples is more periodic than that of unstable ones. We quantified the periodicity of the triples and investigated the correlation between the Fourier power distribution and the system’s lifetime. Using this correlation, we show that it is possible to determine if a triple system in the mixed region is stable or not with very high accuracy. These findings suggest that periodicity in orbital evolution can serve as a robust indicator of stability for hierarchical triples.