An Interferometric Search for Bright Companions to 51 Pegasi

We report on a near-infrared, long-baseline interferometric search for luminous companions to the star 51 Pegasi conducted with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer. Our data is completely consistent with a single-star hypothesis. We find no evidence to suggest a luminous companion to 51 Pegasi, and we can exclude a companion brighter than a Δ K of 4.27 at the 99% confidence level for the 4.2 day orbital period indicated by spectroscopic measurements. This Δ K corresponds to an upper limit in the companion M K of 7.30, which in turn implies a main-sequence companion mass of less than 0.22 M ☉ .