# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The comprehensive knowledge of fundamental parameters of single stars is the basis of the modelling of star clusters and galaxies. Most fundamental stellar parameters of the individual components in SB2 eclipsing binaries are known with very high accuracy. Unfortunately, while masses and radii are well determined, the temperatures strongly depend on photometric calibrations. In the present work, we have used an empirically-calibrated grid of theoretical stellar spectra (BaSeL models) for simultaneously deriving homogeneous effective temperatures and metallicities from observed data. For this purpose, we have selected 20 binary systems (40 stars) for which we have $`uvby`$ Strömgren photometry with estimated errors (see Lastennet et al. 1998 for details).

## 2 An example of simultaneous ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$,$`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$) determination

To compute synthetic colours from the BaSeL models, we need effective temperature ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$), surface gravity ($`\mathrm{log}g`$), and metallicity ($`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$). Consequently, given the observed colours (namely, b$``$y, m<sub>1</sub>, and c<sub>1</sub>), we are able to derive $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, $`\mathrm{log}g`$, and $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ from a comparison with model colours. As the surface gravities can be derived very accurately from the masses and radii of the stars in our working sample, only two physical parameters have to be derived ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$). This has been done by minimizing the $`\chi ^2`$-functional, defined as

$`\chi ^2(T_{\mathrm{eff}},[Fe/H])={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{colour}(\mathrm{i})_{\mathrm{syn}}\mathrm{colour}(\mathrm{i})}{\sigma (\mathrm{colour}(\mathrm{i}))}}\right)^2\right],`$   
where $`n`$ is the number of comparison data, colour(1)= (b$``$y)<sub>0</sub>, colour(2)= m<sub>0</sub>, and colour(3) = c<sub>0</sub>. The best $`\chi ^2`$ is obtained when the synthetic colour, colour(i)<sub>syn</sub>, is equal to the observed one. Finding the central minimum value $`\chi _{\mathrm{min}}^2`$, we form the $`\chi ^2`$-grid in the ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$)-plane and compute the boundaries corresponding to 1 $`\sigma `$, 2 $`\sigma `$, and 3 $`\sigma `$ respectively, as shown in Fig.1 for one of the 40 stars.

The range of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ values that we derive for CW Cep B agrees well with previous estimates (as indicated by the vertical dotted lines), and its metallicity is compatible with those of the Galactic disk stars. As a general trend for the whole sample, it is worth noticing that our $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ ranges do not provide estimates systematically different from previous ones. However, the confidence regions show that most previous estimates of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ are optimistic, and that $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ should not be neglected in such determinations. The effects of surface gravity and interstellar reddening have also been carefully studied. Moreover, comparisons for 8 binaries of our working sample with Hipparcos parallaxes show good agreement with the most reliable parallaxes. Full details and critical discussions are given in Lastennet et al. (1998).