IvS Seminar: Nadya Serebriakova (14/03/2024)

Nadya Serebriakova - "Double Trouble: Mass Accuracy in Eclipsing Binaries" (IvS seminar 14/03/2024)

Abstract: Achieving accurate, model-independent stellar masses remains a challenge in astrophysics. Eclipsing binaries provide a rare opportunity to derive such masses. Analysis of a limited number of eclipsing systems posed another challenge for the community: discrepancy between masses derived from dynamics and from evolutionary models, potentially challenging the latter.
However, the traditional analysis of these systems faces a bottleneck: integrating light curve fitting, spectral disentangling, and spectral fitting demands significant manual intervention and subjective decision-making, which introduces biases that can skew the results.
This seminar presents a self-consistent approach designed to seamlessly integrate photometric and spectroscopic data analysis of eclipsing binaries, thereby minimizing human bias and manual adjustments. By applying this approach to a sample of TESS EBs, complemented by follow-up observations with HERMES, we aim to address the longstanding issue of mass discrepancy.