High-contrast imaging search for stellar and substellar companions of exoplanet host stars

We present the results of our high-contrast imaging survey of close stellar and substellar companions of exoplanet host stars, carried out with the adaptive optics imager NACO at the ESO Paranal observatory, in Chile. In total, 33 exoplanet host stars were observed with NACO in the Ks-band. New comoving companions could be identified close to the stars HD 9578, HD 96167, and HD 142245. The newly detected companions exhibit masses between 0.21 and 0.56 M_⊙ and are located at projected separations from their primaries between about 190 and 510 au. In the case of HD 142245, we found evidence that the detected companion is actually a close binary itself with a projected separation of only about 4 au, i.e. HD 142245 might be a hierarchical triple stellar system, which hosts an exoplanet, a new member in the short list of such systems, presently known. In our imaging campaign, a limiting magnitude of Ks = 18.5 mag is reached in average in the background noise limited region around our targets at projected separations beyond about 100 au, which allows the detection of substellar companions with masses down to about 60 M_Jup. With our NACO observations we can rule out additional stellar companions at projected separations between about 30 and 370 au around the observed exoplanet host stars.