{
  "id": "1508.01254",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2015-08-06T01:15:41.000Z",
  "updated": "2015-08-06T01:15:41.000Z",
  "title": "Beyond the Main Sequence: Testing the accuracy of stellar masses predicted by the PARSEC evolutionary tracks",
  "authors": [
    "Luan Ghezzi",
    "John A. Johnson"
  ],
  "comment": "Submitted to ApJ. Complete tables 1 and 2 are available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_C74xx43AOHTXBKNDh1YVI4RDA/view?usp=sharing",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.SR"
  ],
  "abstract": "Characterizing the physical properties of exoplanets, and understanding their formation and orbital evolution requires precise and accurate knowledge of the physical properties of their host stars. Accurately measuring stellar mass is particularly important because the masses of host stars likely influence planet occurrence and the architectures of planetary systems observed today. Single main-sequence stars typically have masses estimated from evolutionary tracks, which generally provide accurate results due to their extensive empirical calibration. However, the validity of this method for subgiants and giants has been called into question, with suggestions that the evolutionary models could contain systematic errors that would cause mass estimates of these evolved stars to be overestimated. We investigate these concerns using a sample of 59 benchmark evolved stars with model-independent masses (from binary systems or asteroseismology) obtained from the extant literature. We find very good agreement between these benchmark masses and the ones estimated using evolutionary tracks. The average fractional difference in the mass interval $\\sim$0.7 - 4.5 $M_{\\odot}$ is consistent with zero (-1.30 $\\pm$ 2.42%), with no significant trends in the residuals relative to the input parameters. Six stars in our benchmark sample can be classified as Retired A Stars similar to the targets of various Doppler surveys. Our analysis of these small subset of stars reveals a systematic offset of -8.97 $\\pm$ 8.93%, suggesting a possible underestimate rather than an overestimate of stellar masses in this region of the H-R diagram. Taken together, our results indicate that determination of masses of evolved stars using grids of evolutionary tracks is not significantly affected by systematic errors, and is thus valid for estimating the masses of isolated stars beyond the main sequence.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2015-08-06T01:15:41.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "stellar mass",
      "parsec evolutionary tracks",
      "main sequence",
      "evolved stars",
      "host stars"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 0,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}