A Revised Effective Temperature Scale for the Kepler Input Catalog

TL;DR

This paper provides a revised temperature scale for Kepler stars using SDSS filters, compares it with IRFM, and offers corrections for various stellar parameters, improving temperature estimates for Kepler Input Catalog stars.

Contribution

It introduces a new color-temperature relation for the KIC, including corrections for gravity, metallicity, and binarity, aligning the scale with the fundamental IRFM temperature scale.

Findings

Good overall agreement with IRFM scale

Mean shift of 215 K for field dwarfs below 6500 K

Significant statistical corrections for binaries

Abstract

We present a catalog of revised effective temperatures for stars observed in long-cadence mode in the Kepler Input Catalog (KIC). We use SDSS griz filters tied to the fundamental temperature scale. Polynomials for griz color-temperature relations are presented, along with correction terms for surface gravity effects, metallicity, and statistical corrections for binary companions or blending. We compare our temperature scale to the published infrared flux method (IRFM) scale for VJKs in both open clusters and the Kepler fields. We find good agreement overall, with some deviations between (J - Ks)-based temperatures from the IRFM and both SDSS filter and other diagnostic IRFM color-temperature relationships above 6000 K. For field dwarfs we find a mean shift towards hotter temperatures relative to the KIC, of order 215 K, in the regime where the IRFM scale is well-defined (4000 K to 6500 K). This change is of comparable magnitude in both color systems and in spectroscopy for stars with Teff below 6000 K. Systematic differences between temperature estimators appear for hotter stars, and we define corrections to put the SDSS temperatures on the IRFM scale for them. When the theoretical dependence on gravity is accounted for we find a similar temperature scale offset between the fundamental and KIC scales for giants. We demonstrate that statistical corrections to color-based temperatures from binaries are significant. Typical errors, mostly from uncertainties in extinction, are of order 100 K. Implications for other applications of the KIC are discussed.