The empirical mass distributions of hot B subdwarfs derived by asteroseismology

Detailed asteroseismic analyses of 15 pulsating B subdwarfs have been published since a decade, including estimates of the masses of these stars. We present in this talk the empirical mass distribution for hot B subdwarfs on the basis of this sample. We find a sharp mass distribution with a mean mass of 0.470 Msun, a median value of 0.471 Msun, and 68.3% of the stars fall in the narrow range of mass 0.441-0.499 Msun. In a second experiment, we augment our sample with the addition of 5 hot B subdwarfs components of eclipsing binaries, with masses reliably determined by light curve modeling and spectroscopy. The new mass distribution is very similar to the former one with a mean mass of 0.469 Msun, a median value of 0.471 Msun, and a range 0.436-0.501 Msun containing 68.3% of the stars. We also discuss in this talk how these empirical mass distributions, although still based on small-number statistics, compare with the expectations of stellar evolution theory.