Newly Discovered Spectroscopic Binaries Among the Nearest Mid-to-late M Dwarfs

M dwarfs in short-period, spectroscopic binaries provide a unique opportunity to probe star formation and evolution scenarios for objects at the low-mass end of the main sequence. The short periods of these systems facilitate the measurement of their orbits, and the resulting orbital parameters offer hints of their individual histories. However, statistical studies of these objects are challenging, as only a dozen of the currently known nearest, mid-to-late M dwarf multiple systems have orbital solutions. We are conducting a multi-epoch, high-resolution spectroscopic survey of the mid-to-late M dwarfs that lie within 15 parsecs via accurate trigonometric parallaxes. Observations with the Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES, R = 44,000) on the 1.5m telescope at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) on Mt. Hopkins, AZ, are nearing completion. We are beginning year two of the southern part of this survey with CHIRON (R = 80,000) at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory / Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System (CTIO/SMARTS) 1.5m. We have discovered eight new spectroscopic binaries during the TRES portion of our survey whose orbital parameters we present. Their values cover a range of periods, separations, mass ratios, and eccentricities. The addition of these new systems with orbital parameters to the known population of multiple M dwarf systems improves our understanding of the true mass ratio and separation distributions of these fully convective stars. Furthermore, the combination of these systems' gamma velocities with their proper motions permits the exploration of how these systems form and evolve over time. This work was made possible through the support of grants from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. A.M. is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.