Analysis of a selected sample of RR Lyrae stars in LMC from OGLE III

TL;DR

This study analyzes 655 RR Lyrae stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud using OGLE III data, revealing pulsation modes, Blazhko modulation rates, and rare double-mode pulsators, contributing to understanding stellar variability.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of RR Lyrae pulsation properties, including modulation rates and identification of rare double-mode pulsators, using a large, high-quality dataset.

Findings

Identification of Oo I and Oo II dichotomy in LMC RR Lyrae stars.

Estimated lower limit of 7.5% for Blazhko modulation in fundamental-mode RR Lyrae.

Discovery of rare fundamental/second-overtone double-mode pulsators.

Abstract

A systematic study of RR Lyrae stars is performed based on a selected sample of 655 objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud with observation of long span and numerous measurements by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment III project. The Phase Dispersion Method and linear superposition of the harmonic oscillations are used to derive the pulsation frequency and variation properties. It is found that there exists an Oo I and Oo II dichotomy in the LMC RR Lyrae stars. Due to our strict criteria to identify a frequency, a lower limit of the incidence rate of Blazhko modulation in LMC is estimated in various subclasses of RR Lyrae stars. For fundamental-mode RR Lyrae stars, the rate 7.5% is smaller than previous result. In the case of the first-overtone RR Lyr variables, the rate 9.1% is relatively high. In addition to the Blazhko variables, fifteen objects are identified to pulsate in the fundamental/first-overtone double mode. Furthermore, four objects show a period ratio around 0.6 which makes them very likely the rare pulsators in the fundamental/second-overtone double-mode.