The Mass Distribution of sdB Stars Derived by Asteroseismology and Other Means: Implications for Stellar Evolution Theory

Understanding the formation of sdB stars is one of the remaining challenges of stellar evolution theory. Competing scenarios have been proposed to account for the existence of such evolved objects. They give quite different mass distributions for resulting sdB stars. Detailed asteroseismic analyses, including mass estimates, of 15 pulsating hot B subdwarfs have been published in the past decade. Masses have also been reliably determined by light curve modeling and spectroscopy for 7 sdB components of eclipsing or reflection binaries. We present here the empirical mass distribution of sdB stars on the basis of these samples. Implications are also briefly discussed.