In addition to my hot Jupiter work, I have also worked on spin-orbit dynamics in stellar triple systems, with Dong Lai and Natalia Storch. Many stellar binaries exhibit spin-orbit misalignment, and it remains unclear whether such misalignments are primordial, or arose after formation due to dynamical interactions with a third body.

Our work focuses on the latter scenario (Anderson, Lai, & Storch 2017), in which spin-orbit misalignment arises due to perturbations from a tertiary stellar companion, and identifies the properties required by such a companion to tilt the spin axes of the inner binary members.

As an application, we consider the eclipsing binary DI Herculis, which has highly misaligned primary and secondary components, and constrain the properties a hidden tertiary would need in order to generate the observed spin-orbit misalignment. We find that a solar-mass tertiary would need to be located within about 3 AU to generate the observed misalignment.