Towards early-type eclipsing binaries as extragalactic milestones: I. Physical parameters of OGLE-LMC-ECL-22270 and OGLE-LMC-ECL-06782

TL;DR

This paper calibrates a distance measurement method using early-type eclipsing binaries, analyzing two systems to obtain precise physical parameters and validate the approach for extragalactic distance determination.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed modeling of two early-type binary systems for distance calibration, achieving high-precision physical parameters and validating the method against existing models.

Findings

Precise masses measured with 0.6-1% accuracy.

Distance to LMC estimated as 18.47 ± 0.15 mag.

Modeling results align with evolution theory, favoring higher overshooting values.

Abstract

In this first paper of the series we describe our project to calibrate the distance determination method based on early-type binary systems. The final objective is to measure accurate, geometrical distances to galaxies beyond the Magellanic Clouds with a precision of 2%. We start with the analysis of two early-type systems for which we have collected all the required spectroscopic and photometric data. Apart from catalog publications, these systems have not been studied yet, and it is the first time the modeling of light and radial velocity curves is performed for them. From the analysis we obtained precise physical parameters of the components, including the masses measured with precision of 0.6-1% and radii with precision of 0.4-3%. For one system we determined the $(V-K)$ color and estimated the distance using the bolometric flux scaling method (DM=18.47 $\pm$ 0.15 mag), which agrees well with our accurate determination of the distance to the LMC from late-type giants. For the same system we determined the surface brightness of individual stars using our model, and checked that it is consistent with a recent surface brightness -- color relation. We compared our results with evolution theory models of massive stars and found they agree in general, however, models with higher overshooting values give more consistent results. The age of the system was estimated to from 11.7 to 13.8 Myr, depending on the model.