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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2016
Eclipsing binaries (EBs) have long been known for providing accurate stellar fundamental properties, such as masses and radii. These are obtained from the modeling of light and radial velocity curves and, with input data of good quality, uncertainties of a few percent in the components’ physical properties are now routinely achieved. Additionally, a number of other observables are determined for eclipsing binaries using techniques similar to those employed for single stars: Effective temperatures from multi-wavelength photometric analysis and chemical abundances from detailed spectroscopic modeling. Thus, EB systems provide a complete characterization of the physical properties of their components, with the added constraint that both stars should have identical age. Also worth mentioning is the ubiquity of EB systems among all kinds of stars. Main sequence stars, variable stars, giants, supergiants, and compact objects, to name a few, are found as members of EBs. This makes EBs excellent “laboratories” for stellar astrophysics. A number of studies have exploited this fact and carried out detailed analysis of galactic EB systems (e.g. Andersen et al. 1991; Clausen 1991; Claret & Giménez 1993; Schröder et al. 1997; Guinan et al. 2000). A few areas where EBs play a crucial role in astrophysics are stellar structure and evolution, tidal evolution, stellar atmospheres, binary evolution in interactive systems,…