Determine the physical connection of doubly eclipsing candidates

Establish whether candidate doubly eclipsing systems are gravitationally connected 2+2 quadruples by determining whether the two eclipsing binaries share a mutual orbit around a common barycenter.

Background

The paper distinguishes between doubly eclipsing candidates, identified through two different eclipsing periods in the photometric data, and confirmed 2+2 quadruples, for which the mutual orbital motion of the two eclipsing binaries has been demonstrated. Optical doubles and unrelated blends can produce similar photometric signatures, so the physical association of candidates cannot be inferred from the presence of two periods alone.

The authors explicitly state that the true connection and gravitational coupling of such candidates are unknown until mutual movement around a common barycenter is established. Detecting the mutual orbit is difficult because outer periods may extend over decades, centuries, or thousands of years, while the available observational baselines are generally much shorter.