2025ApJ...982...90W

Star-forming regions, characterized by dense environments, experience frequent encounters that significantly influence binary systems, leading to their hardening, softening, or ionization. We extend the Hut and Bahcall formalism to derive an analytical expression for the ionization cross section in extreme mass ratio binary systems, allowing us to investigate the orbital evolution and population dynamics of binary planets and binary brown dwarfs in star clusters, while considering ongoing binary system formation. Our findings reveal that for low-mass soft binaries, the semimajor axis distribution asymptotes to a universal power law between ∝a^–8/3 and ∝a^–5/3 over the derived ionization timescale. We also discuss the implications of our results for the candidate Jupiter-mass binary objects putatively reported in the Trapezium cluster. We demonstrate that if their existence is verified, they likely form continuously with a spectrum proportional to a¹, aligning better with the ejection mechanism than with the in situ formation mechanism, which predicts a distribution roughly proportional to a^–1. However, this implies an impractically high ejection formation rate. Alternatively, if these objects are binary brown dwarfs, continuous in situ formation (∝a^–1) with an initial minimal semimajor axis around 20 au and a formation rate of 100 Myr^–1 plausibly matches the observed number of single objects, binary number, binary fraction, and semimajor axis distribution.