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A self-consistent orbital architecture for GG Tau A. I. Simultaneous orbital fitting of the hierarchical triple

Published 15 Sep 2026 in astro-ph.SR, astro-ph.EP, and astro-ph.GA | (2609.17322v1)

Abstract: GG Tau AA is a young triple system with the close pair, Ab1Ab_1--Ab2Ab_2, and AaAa, surrounded by a massive circumtriple disk with a large inner cavity difficult to explain in a binary framework. We aim to determine the orbital architecture and individual stellar masses of GG Tau AA and assess how the available astrometric and disk-based constraints restrict the range of admissible solutions. We performed a joint fit using Oracle, developed specifically for hierarchical stellar systems. All astrometric measurements were placed in a common reference frame, since the historical wide-orbit astrometry is given relative to the unresolved photocenter of the AbAb subsystem. The fit included one new wide-orbit astrometric epoch and a prior on the total stellar mass derived from disk kinematics. We then applied, in post-processing, an additional geometrical constraint based on the observed center of the circumtriple disk. The fit yields orbital solutions compatible with the available astrometric and disk-based constraints and provides estimates of the individual stellar masses. The additional wide-orbit epoch only marginally reduces the range of admissible solutions. By contrast, the disk-center constraint leaves the favored orbital architectures largely unchanged but significantly tightens the stellar-mass partition. This yields posterior masses of 0.521<sup>+0.069−0.0510.521<sup>{+0.069}_{-0.051}, 0.106<sup>+0.017−0.0130.106<sup>{+0.017}_{-0.013}, and 0.79<sup>+0.10−0.100.79<sup>{+0.10}_{-0.10} M⊙M_\odot for Ab1Ab_1, Ab2Ab_2, and AaAa, respectively. The reported values are posterior medians with 16th--84th percentile intervals. A joint treatment of the two orbital levels is required to recover a physically meaningful architecture and constrain the individual stellar masses. The resulting solutions provide a basis for future dynamical modeling of the circumtriple disk and for testing whether the observed cavity can further constrain the system architecture.

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