Optical and Infrared Photometry of Low-Mass Stars in Eclipsing Binaries

Abstract - We report eclipse timings and optical/infrared photometry of a sample of binary stars that include low-mass nondegenerate stars, some of which are post-common envelope (PCE) secondary companions to hot subdwarf B (sdB) stars. We model the reflection effect in the latter systems to characterize the temperature of the heated hemisphere of the secondaries, first from blackbody fits and then by comparison to libraries of the spectral energy distribution of dwarf M stars. We explore how consistent our phenomenological results are with the properties inferred from analysis of light curve shapes, and discuss the prospects for turning these reflection effect systems into double-lined spectroscopic binaries for characterization of the mass-radius relationship of low-mass PCE secondaries.