Red Supergiant Stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud: I. The Period-Luminosity Relation

Abstract

From previous samples of Red Supergiants (RSGs) by various groups, 191 objects are assembled to compose a large sample of RSG candidates in LMC. For 189 of them, the identity as a RSG is verified by their brightness and color indexes in several near- and mid-infrared bands related to the 2MASS JHKs bands and the Spitzer/IRAC and Spitzer/MIPS bands. From the visual time-series photometric observations by the ASAS and MACHO projects which cover nearly 8-10 years, the period and amplitude of light variation are analyzed carefully using both the PDM and Period04 methods. According to the properties of light variation, these objects are classified into five categories: (1) 20 objects are saturated in photometry or located in crowded stellar field with poor photometric results, (2) 35 objects with too complex variation to have any certain period, (3) 23 objects with irregular variation, (4) 16 objects with semi-regular variation, and (5) 95 objects with Long Secondary Period (LSP) among which 31 have distinguishable short period, and 51 have a long period shorter than 3000 days that can be determined with reasonable accuracy. For the semi-regular variables and the LSP variables with distinguishable short period, the period-luminosity relation is analyzed in the visual, near-infrared and mid-infrared bands. It is found that the P-L relation is tight in the infrared bands such as the 2MASS JHKs bands and the Spitzer/IRAC bands, in particular in the Spitzer/IRAC [3.6] and [4.5] bands; meanwhile, the P-L relation is relatively sparse in the V band which may be caused by the inhomogeneous interstellar extinction. The results are compared with others' P-L relationships for RSGs and the P-L sequences of red giants in LMC.

41 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables, accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (9)

• The Supernova Channel of Super-AGB Stars
• A new Cepheid distance to the maser-host galaxy NGC 4258 and its implications for the Hubble Constant
• Spitzer SAGE Infrared Photometry of Massive Stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The Effective Temperatures and Physical Properties of Magellanic Cloud Red Supergiants: The Effects of Metallicity
• Variability in red supergiant stars: pulsations, long secondary periods and convection noise
• Spitzer SAGE survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud II: Evolved Stars and Infrared Color Magnitude Diagrams
• The dust condensation sequence in red super-giant stars
• Ellipsoidal Variability and Long Secondary Periods in MACHO Red Giant Stars
• The LMC's Top 250: Classification of the Most Luminous Compact 8 micron Sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Cited by in corpus (29)

• The Zwicky Transient Facility Catalog of Periodic Variable Stars
• SN2023ixf in Messier 101: A Variable Red Supergiant as the Progenitor Candidate to a Type II Supernova
• A Luminous Red Supergiant and Dusty Long-period Variable Progenitor for SN 2023ixf
• The Period-Luminosity Relation of Red Supergiant Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity V. Mass-Loss Rate of Red Supergiant Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey. XXX. Red stragglers in the clusters Hodge 301 and SL 639
• The period-luminosity relation of red supergiants with Gaia DR2
• JWST's PEARLS: Mothra, a new kaiju star at z=2.091 extremely magnified by MACS0416, and implications for dark matter models
• Red Supergiants in M31 and M33 I. The Complete Sample
• The Period-Luminosity Relations of Red Supergiants in M33 and M31
• The Sample of Red Supergiants in Twelve Low-Mass Galaxies of the Local Group
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity III. A Source Catalog for the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity II. Red Supergiant Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Cool, Luminous, and Highly Variable Stars in the Magellanic Clouds from ASAS-SN: Implications for Thorne-Żytkow Objects and Super-Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• The Optical to Infrared Extinction Law of Magellanic Clouds Based on Red Supergiant and Classical Cepheid
• Red Supergiant Candidates for Multimessenger Monitoring of the Next Galactic Supernova
• An Exceptional Dimming Event for a Massive, Cool Supergiant in M51
• Near-infrared spectroscopy of candidate red supergiant stars in clusters
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity IV. Using 1.6 $\mu$m "H-bump" to identify red supergiant stars: a case study of NGC 6822
• On Granulation and Irregular Variation of Red Supergiants
• A Rapidly Varying Red Supergiant X-Ray Binary in the Galactic Center
• Cool, Luminous, and Highly Variable Stars in the Magellanic Clouds. II: Spectroscopic and Environmental Analysis of Thorne-Żytkow Object and Super-AGB Star Candidates
• Investigating episodic mass loss in evolved massive stars: II. Physical properties of red supergiants at subsolar metallicity
• Episodic mass loss in the very luminous red supergiant [W60] B90 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• S-type stars discovered in Medium-Resolution Spectra of LAMOST DR9
• New Transient ULX Candidate in NGC 4254: Evidence of Circumbinary Disk?
• Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of Luminous Extragalactic Infrared Transients and Variables from the SPIRITS Survey
• Red Supergiants in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
• The First Glimpse of ULXs Through the Near-Infrared Images Captured by the James Webb Space Telescope