Physics Of Eclipsing Binaries. II. Towards the Increased Model Fidelity

Abstract

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 time travel effect, advanced phase computation, volume conservation in eccentric orbits, and improved computation of local intensity across the stellar surfaces that includes photon-weighted mode, enhanced limb darkening treatment, better reflection treatment and Doppler boosting. Here we present the concepts on which PHOEBE is built on and proofs of concept that demonstrate the increased model fidelity.

60 pages, 15 figures, published in ApJS; accompanied by the release of PHOEBE 2.0 on http://phoebe-project.org

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• Bayesian Model Testing of Ellipsoidal Variations on Stars due to Hot Jupiters
• Light curve solutions of the eclipsing eccentric binaries KIC 8111622, KIC 10518735, KIC 8196180 and their out-of-eclipse variability
• Light curve solutions of the eccentric binaries KIC 10992733, KIC 5632781, KIC 10026136 and their out-of-eclipse variability