Solar-type eclipsing binaries as benchmark stars

Detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs), especially double-lined systems (SB2 DEBs), are becoming recognised as high-quality benchmarks for stellar astrophysics thanks to recent improvements in the precision of their measured model-independent masses and radii. This is thanks to high-quality space-based photometry (e.g. TESS, Kepler, CHEOPS) and radial velocity measurements from stable high-resolution échelle spectra, which now make it common to reach <0.2% precision in these properties. DEBs can therefore provide extremely rigorous benchmarking constraints for a wide range of applications, e.g. calibrating stellar evolution models, testing asteroseismic scaling relations, and validating machine-learning pipelines such as those used in exoplanet host star characterisation (e.g. PLATO, 4MOST). However, effective temperature (Teff) remains a persistent limitation on the usefulness of DEBs as benchmarks, due to large systematic uncertainties and inconsistent methodologies throughout the literature. I will present results from our ongoing work to address this issue: we use a novel method to measure fundamental Teff for stars in DEBs by measuring bolometric flux contributions from multi-band light curves, and angular diameter from stellar radii and parallax. I will highlight interesting examples from our growing sample of well-characterised FGK-type DEBs, and discuss future extensions to the method and its applications.