The EBLM project -- IX. Five fully convective M-dwarfs, precisely measured with CHEOPS and TESS light curves

TL;DR

This study precisely measures the masses, radii, and other parameters of five fully convective M-dwarfs using high-precision CHEOPS and TESS light curves, providing valuable data to test stellar models and exoplanet studies.

Contribution

It presents the first ultra high-precision measurements of five fully convective M-dwarfs using combined CHEOPS and TESS data, improving the accuracy of stellar parameter determinations.

Findings

Radius measurements with better than 1% accuracy

Surface gravity determined within 0.2%

Radial velocity data crucial for sub-5% radius accuracy

Abstract

Eclipsing binaries are important benchmark objects to test and calibrate stellar structure and evolution models. This is especially true for binaries with a fully convective M-dwarf component for which direct measurements of these stars' masses and radii are difficult using other techniques. Within the potential of M-dwarfs to be exoplanet host stars, the accuracy of theoretical predictions of their radius and effective temperature as a function of their mass is an active topic of discussion. Not only the parameters of transiting exoplanets but also the success of future atmospheric characterisation rely on accurate theoretical predictions. We present the analysis of five eclipsing binaries with low-mass stellar companions out of a sub-sample of 23, for which we obtained ultra high-precision light curves using the CHEOPS satellite. The observation of their primary and secondary eclipses are combined with spectroscopic measurements to precisely model the primary parameters and derive the M-dwarfs mass, radius, surface gravity, and effective temperature estimates using the PYCHEOPS data analysis software. Combining these results to the same set of parameters derived from TESS light curves, we find very good agreement (better than 1\% for radius and better than 0.2% for surface gravity). We also analyse the importance of precise orbits from radial velocity measurements and find them to be crucial to derive M-dwarf radii in a regime below 5% accuracy. These results add five valuable data points to the mass-radius diagram of fully-convective M-dwarfs.