PHYSICS OF ECLIPSING BINARIES. II. TOWARD THE INCREASED MODEL FIDELITY
- Villanova University, Dept. of Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences, 800 E Lancaster Avenue, Villanova PA 19085 (United States)
- Université de Montréal, Pavillon Roger-Gaudry, 2900, boul. Édouard-Montpetit Montréal QC H3T 1J4 (Canada)
- Radboud University Nijmegen, Department of Astrophysics, IMAPP, P.O. Box 9010, 6500 GL, Nijmegen (Netherlands)
- Eastern University, Dept. of Astronomy and Physics, 1300 Eagle Road, St. Davids, PA 19087 (United States)
- KU Leuven, Instituut voor Sterrenkunde, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Heverlee (Belgium)
The precision of photometric and spectroscopic observations has been systematically improved in the last decade, mostly thanks to space-borne photometric missions and ground-based spectrographs dedicated to finding exoplanets. The field of eclipsing binary stars strongly benefited from this development. Eclipsing binaries serve as critical tools for determining fundamental stellar properties (masses, radii, temperatures, and luminosities), yet the models are not capable of reproducing observed data well, either because of the missing physics or because of insufficient precision. This led to a predicament where radiative and dynamical effects, insofar buried in noise, started showing up routinely in the data, but were not accounted for in the models. PHOEBE (PHysics Of Eclipsing BinariEs; http://phoebe-project.org) is an open source modeling code for computing theoretical light and radial velocity curves that addresses both problems by incorporating missing physics and by increasing the computational fidelity. In particular, we discuss triangulation as a superior surface discretization algorithm, meshing of rotating single stars, light travel time effects, advanced phase computation, volume conservation in eccentric orbits, and improved computation of local intensity across the stellar surfaces that includes the photon-weighted mode, the enhanced limb darkening treatment, the better reflection treatment, and Doppler boosting. Here we present the concepts on which PHOEBE is built and proofs of concept that demonstrate the increased model fidelity.
- OSTI ID:
- 22661437
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, Vol. 227, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0067-0049
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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