Period-Luminosity Relations for Cepheid Variables: From Mid-Infrared to Multi-Phase

TL;DR

This paper derives mid-infrared Cepheid period-luminosity relations from Spitzer data and investigates how P-L relations vary with pulsational phase and metallicity, impacting distance measurements and cosmology.

Contribution

It provides new MIR P-L relations for Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds and analyzes their phase-dependent variability and metallicity effects.

Findings

MIR P-L relations were derived for Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds.

Cepheid P-L relations vary significantly with pulsational phase.

Metallicity differences influence phase-dependent P-L relation variations.

Abstract

This paper discusses two aspects of current research on the Cepheid period-luminosity (P-L) relation: the derivation of mid-infrared (MIR) P-L relations and the investigation of multi-phase P-L relations. The MIR P-L relations for Cepheids are important in the James Webb Space Telescope era for the distance scale issue, as the relations have potential to derive the Hubble constant within ~ 2% accuracy - a critical constraint in precision cosmology. Consequently, we have derived the MIR P-L relations for Cepheids in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, using archival data from Spitzer Space Telescope. We also compared currently empirical P-L relations for Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds to the synthetic MIR P-L relations derived from pulsational models. For the study of multi-phase P-L relations, we present convincing evidence that the Cepheid P-L relations in the Magellanic Clouds are highly dynamic quantities that vary significantly when considered as a function of pulsational phase. We found that there is a difference in P-L relations as a function of phase between the Cepheids in each of the Clouds; the most likely cause for this is the metallicity difference between the two galaxies. We also investigated the dispersion of the multi-phase P-L relations, and found that the minimum dispersion do not differ significantly from the mean light P-L dispersion.