  Recently, with the goal to study multiplicity of chemically peculiar stars,
we carried out a survey of 40 stars using diffraction limited near infrared
(IR) imaging with NAOS-CONICA (NACO) at the VLT. Here, we announce the
detection of 27 near IR companion candidates around 25 late B-type chemically
peculiar stars exhibiting strong overabundances of the chemical elements Hg and
Mn in their atmospheres. A key point for the understanding of the abundance
patterns in these stars may be connected with binarity and multiplicity. It is
intriguing that more than half of the sample of HgMn stars studied previously
by speckle interferometry and recently using the adaptive optics system NACO
belong to multiple systems.

Astrophysics