Testing the nonlinearity of the BVIcJHKs period-luminosity relations for the Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheids

Abstract

A number of recent works have suggested that the period-luminosity (PL) relation for the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) Cepheids exhibits a controversial nonlinear feature with a break period at 10 days. Therefore, the aim of this Research Note is to test the linearity/nonlinearity of the PL relations for the LMC Cepheids in BVIcJHKs band, as well as in the Wesenheit functions. We show that simply comparing the long and short period slopes, together with their associate d standard deviations, leads to a strictly larger error rate than applying rigorous statistical tests such as the F-test. We applied various statistical tests to the current published LMC Cepheid data. These statistical tests include the F-test, the testimator test, and the Schwarz information criterion (SIC) method. The results from these statistical tests strongly suggest that the LMC PL relation is nonlinear in BVIcJH band but linear in the Ks band and in the Wesenheit functions. Using the properties of period-color relations at maximum light and multi-phase relations, we believe that the nonlinear PL relation is not caused by extinction errors.

6 pages, 5 figures and 2 tables, A&A accepted

References in corpus (4)

• A new calibration of Galactic Cepheid Period-Luminosity relations from B to K bands, and a comparison to LMC PL relations
• Nonlinear Period-Luminosity Relation for the Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheids: Myths and Truths
• The Detailed Forms of the LMC Cepheid PL and PLC Relations
• Investigations of the Non-Linear LMC Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation with Testimator and Schwarz Information Criterion Methods

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• The Araucaria Project. The Distance to the Local Group Galaxy WLM from Near-Infrared Photometry of Cepheid Variables
• Properties of M31. II: A Cepheid disk sample derived from the first year of PS1 PAndromeda data
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• The Araucaria Project: The Distance to the Sculptor Group Galaxy NGC 247 from Cepheid Variables Discovered in a Wide-Field