A Data-driven Study of RR Lyrae Near-IR Light Curves: Principal Component Analysis, Robust Fits, and Metallicity Estimates

TL;DR

This study develops a principal component analysis-based method to accurately characterize RR Lyrae near-infrared light curves and estimate their metallicities, enhancing understanding of old stellar populations.

Contribution

It introduces a robust PCA-based approach for light curve shape estimation and metallicity prediction from near-infrared data, improving upon previous techniques.

Findings

Principal components effectively model light curve shapes.

Metallicity can be estimated with 0.2-0.25 dex accuracy.

Method applicable to other variable stars and bands.

Abstract

RR~Lyrae variables are widely used tracers of Galactic halo structure and kinematics, but they can also serve to constrain the distribution of the old stellar population in the Galactic bulge. With the aim of improving their near-infrared photometric characterization, we investigate their near-infrared light curves, as well as the empirical relationships between their light curve and metallicities using machine learning methods. We introduce a new, robust method for the estimation of the light-curve shapes, and hence the average magnitudes of RR~Lyrae variables in the $K_\mathrm{S}$ band, by utilizing the first few principal components (PCs) as basis vectors, obtained from the PC analysis of a training set of light curves. Furthermore, we use the amplitudes of these PCs to predict the light-curve shape of each star in the $J$-band, allowing us to precisely determine their average magnitudes (hence colors), even in cases where only one $J$ measurement is available. Finally, we demonstrate that the $K_\mathrm{S}$-band light-curve parameters of RR~Lyrae variables, together with the period, allow the estimation of the metallicity of individual stars with an accuracy of $\sim 0.2 - 0.25$ dex, providing valuable chemical information about old stellar populations bearing RR~Lyrae variables. The methods presented here can be straightforwardly adopted for other classes of variable stars, bands, or for the estimation of other physical quantities.