The EBLM Project—From False Positives to Benchmark Stars and Circumbinary Exoplanets
P. F. L. Maxted, A. H. M. J. Triaud, David V. Martin
Abstract
The EBLM project aims to characterise very-low-mass stars that are companions to solar-type stars in eclipsing binaries. We describe the history and motivation for this project, the methodology we use to obtain the precise mass, radius, and effective temperature estimates for very-low-mass M dwarfs, and review the results of the EBLM study and those from related projects. We show that radius inflation in fully convective stars is a more subtle effect than what was previously thought based on less precise measurements, i.e., the mass–radius–effective temperature relations we observe for fully convective stars in single-line eclipsing binaries show reasonable agreement with the theoretical models, particularly if we account for the M-dwarf metallicity, as inferred from the analysis of the primary star spectrum.