Temperature, gravity, and bolometric correction scales for non-supergiant OB stars

Abstract

Context. Precise and accurate determinations of effective temperature and surface gravity are mandatory to derive reliable chemical abundances and fundamental parameters like distances, masses, radii, luminosities of OB stars. Aims. Atmospheric parameters recently determined at high precision with several independent spectroscopic indicators in NLTE are employed to calibrate photometric relationships. Methods. Temperatures and gravities of 30 calibrators are compared to reddening-independent quantities of the Johnson and Stroemgren photometric systems. We also examine the spectral and luminosity classification of the star sample and compute bolometric corrections. Results. Calibrations of temperatures and gravities are proposed for various photometric indices and spectral types. Effective temperatures can be determined at a precision of ~400 K for luminosity classes III/IV and ~800 K for luminosity class V. Surface gravities can reach internal uncertainties as low as ~0.08 dex when using our calibration to the Johnson Q-parameter. Similar precision is achieved for gravities derived from the beta-index and the precision is lower for both atmospheric parameters when using the Stroemgren indices c1 and [u-b]. Our uncertainties are smaller than typical differences among other methods in the literature, reaching values up to ~2000 K for temperature and ~0.25 dex for gravity, and in extreme cases, ~6000 K and ~0.4 dex, respectively. A parameter calibration for sub-spectral types is also proposed. We present a new bolometric correction relation to temperature based on our empirical data. Conclusions. The photometric calibrations presented here are useful tools to estimate effective temperatures and surface gravities of non-supergiant OB stars in a fast manner. We recommend to use these calibrations as a first step, with subsequent refinements based on spectroscopy (abridged).