Grid-based estimates of stellar ages in binary systems. SCEPtER: Stellar CharactEristics Pisa Estimation gRid

TL;DR

This study assesses the accuracy and biases of grid-based methods in estimating stellar ages in binary systems, highlighting the impact of observational uncertainties and stellar physics assumptions on age determination.

Contribution

It introduces an improved grid-based age estimation technique and quantifies the effects of various physical and observational uncertainties on age accuracy.

Findings

Random error in age estimates is about ±7%, varying with evolutionary phase.

Systematic biases can reach up to 120% of the random error due to physical assumptions.

Observational uncertainties can cause apparent non-coevality in truly coeval binary stars.

Abstract

We investigate the performance of grid-based techniques in estimating the age of stars in detached eclipsing binary systems. We evaluate the precision of the estimates due to the uncertainty in the observational constraints, and the systematic bias caused by the uncertainty in convective core overshooting, element diffusion, mixing-length value, and initial helium content. We adopted the SCEPtER grid, which includes stars with mass in the range [0.8; 1.6] Msun and evolutionary stages from the ZAMS to the central hydrogen depletion. Age estimates have been obtained by a generalisation of the technique described in our previous work. We showed that the typical 1 sigma random error in age estimates - due to the uncertainty on the observational constraints - is about +- 7%, which is nearly independent of the masses of the two stars. However, such an error strongly depends on the evolutionary phase and becomes larger and asymmetric for stars near the ZAMS where it ranges from about +90% to -25%. The systematic bias due to the including mild and strong convective core overshooting is about 50% and 120% of the error due to observational uncertainties. A variation of +- 1 in the helium-to-metal enrichment ratio accounts for about +- 150% of the random error. The neglect of microscopic diffusion accounts for a bias of about 60% of the random error. We also introduced a statistical test of the expected difference in the recovered age of two coeval stars in a binary system. We find that random fluctuations within the current observational uncertainties can lead genuine coeval binary components to appear to be non-coeval with a difference in age as high as 60%.