Weighing stars from birth to death: mass determination methods across the HRD
Abstract
The mass of a star is the most fundamental parameter for its structure, evolution, and final fate. It is particularly important for any kind of stellar archaeology and characterization of exoplanets. There exists a variety of methods in astronomy to estimate or determine it. In this review we present a significant number of such methods, beginning with the most direct and model-independent approach using detached eclipsing binaries. We then move to more indirect and model-dependent methods, such as the quite commonly used isochrone or stellar track fitting. The arrival of quantitative asteroseismology has opened a completely new approach to determine stellar masses and to complement and improve the accuracy of other methods. We include methods for different evolutionary stages, from the pre-main sequence to evolved (super)giants and final remnants. For all methods uncertainties and restrictions will be discussed. We provide lists of altogether more than 200 benchmark stars with relative mass accuracies between for the covered mass range of , of which are stars burning hydrogen in their core and the other covering all other evolved stages. We close with a recommendation how to combine various methods to arrive at a "mass-ladder" for stars.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2006.10868,
title = {Weighing stars from birth to death: mass determination methods across the HRD},
author = {Aldo Serenelli and Achim Weiss and Conny Aerts and George C. Angelou and David Baroch and Nate Bastian and Paul G. Beck and Maria Bergemann and Joachim M. Bestenlehner and Ian Czekala and Nancy Elias-Rosa and Ana Escorza and Vincent Van Eylen and Diane K. Feuillet and Davide Gandolfi and Mark Gieles and Leo Girardi and Yveline Lebreton and Nicolas Lodieu and Marie Martig and Marcelo M. Miller Bertolami and Joey S. G. Mombarg and Juan Carlos Morales and Andres Moya and Benard Nsamba and Kresimir Pavlovski and May G. Pedersen and Ignasi Ribas and Fabian R. N. Schneider and Victor Silva Aguirre and Keivan G. Stassun and Eline Tolstoy and Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay and Konstanze Zwintz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.10868},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
Invited review article for The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review. 146 pages, 16 figures, 11 tables. Accepted version by the Journal. It includes summary figure of accuracy/precision of methods for mass ranges and summary table for individual methods