The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs: Different roads to radii and masses of the target stars

TL;DR

This study derives stellar radii and masses for 293 nearby M dwarfs using high-resolution spectroscopy, broadband photometry, Gaia parallaxes, and multiple methods, achieving high accuracy and consistency across techniques.

Contribution

First large homogeneous spectroscopic survey to determine M dwarf stellar parameters using multiple independent methods with high precision.

Findings

Radii range from 0.1 to 0.6 solar radii with 2-3% error.

Masses range from 0.09 to 0.6 solar masses with 3-5% error.

Good agreement among different methods for most targets.

Abstract

We determine the radii and masses of 293 nearby, bright M dwarfs of the CARMENES survey. This is the first time that such a large and homogeneous high-resolution (R>80 000) spectroscopic survey has been used to derive these fundamental stellar parameters. We derived the radii using Stefan-Boltzmann's law. We obtained the required effective temperatures $T_{\rm eff}$ from a spectral analysis and we obtained the required luminosities L from integrated broadband photometry together with the Gaia DR2 parallaxes. The mass was then determined using a mass-radius relation that we derived from eclipsing binaries known in the literature. We compared this method with three other methods: (1) We calculated the mass from the radius and the surface gravity log g, which was obtained from the same spectral analysis as $T_{\rm eff}$. (2) We used a widely used infrared mass-magnitude relation. (3) We used a Bayesian approach to infer stellar parameters from the comparison of the absolute magnitudes and colors of our targets with evolutionary models. Between spectral types M0V and M7V our radii cover the range $0.1\,R_{\normalsize\odot}<R<0.6\,R_{\normalsize\odot}$ with an error of 2-3% and our masses cover $0.09\,{\mathcal M}_{\normalsize\odot}<{\mathcal M}<0.6\,{\mathcal M}_{\normalsize\odot}$ with an error of 3-5%. We find good agreement between the masses determined with these different methods for most of our targets. Only the masses of very young objects show discrepancies. This can be well explained with the assumptions that we used for our methods.