New near-infrared period-luminosity-metallicity relations for RR Lyrae stars and the outlook for Gaia

Abstract

We present results of the analysis of 70 RR Lyrae stars located in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Combining spectroscopically determined metallicity of these stars from the literature with precise periods from the OGLE III catalogue and multi-epoch $K_{\mathrm{s}}$ photometry from the VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds system (VMC), we derive a new near-infrared period-luminosity-metallicity ($\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{L}}_{{\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{s}}}\mathrm{Z}$) relation for RR Lyrae variables. In order to fit the relation we use a fitting method developed specifically for this study. The zero-point of the relation is estimated in two different ways: by assuming the value of the distance to the LMC and by using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) parallaxes of five RR Lyrae stars in the Milky Way (MW). The difference in distance moduli derived by applying these two approaches is $\sim 0.2$ mag. To investigate this point further we derive the $\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{L}}_{{\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{s}}}\mathrm{Z}$ relation based on 23 MW RR Lyrae stars which had been analysed in Baade-Wesselink studies. We compared the derived $\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{L}}_{{\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{s}}}\mathrm{Z}$ relations for RR Lyrae stars in the MW and LMC. Slopes and zero-points are different, but still consistent within the errors. The shallow slope of the metallicity term is confirmed by both LMC and MW variables. The astrometric space mission Gaia is expected to provide a huge contribution to the determination of the RR Lyrae $\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{L}}_{{\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{s}}}\mathrm{Z}$ relation, however, calculating an absolute magnitude from the trigonometric parallax of each star and fitting a $\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{L}}_{{\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{s}}}\mathrm{Z}$ relation directly to period and absolute magnitude leads to biased results. We present a tool to achieve an unbiased solution by modelling the data and inferring the slope and zero-point of the relation via statistical methods.

arXiv comment38 pages, 5 figures. The paper is accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (44)

• emcee: The MCMC Hammer
• Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant
• GAIA: Composition, Formation and Evolution of the Galaxy
• An eclipsing binary distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud accurate to 2 per cent
• Intrinsic iron spread and a new metallicity scale for Globular Clusters
• Abundances for Globular Cluster Giants: I. Homogeneous Metallicities for 24 Clusters
• Gaia broad band photometry
• The VMC Survey - I. Strategy and First Data
• The RR Lyrae Period-Luminosity Relation. I. Theoretical Calibration
• Bump Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds: Metallicities, the Distances to the LMC and SMC, and the Pulsation-Evolution Mass Discrepancy
• Clustering of Local Group distances: publication bias or correlated measurements? I. The Large Magellanic Cloud
• A pulsational approach to near infrared and visual magnitudes of RR Lyrae stars
• The Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud from the Eclipsing Binary HV2274
• Astrometry with Hubble Space Telescope: A Parallax of the Fundamental Distance Calibrator RR Lyrae
• Metal Abundances, Radial Velocities and other Physical Characteristics for the RR Lyrae Stars in the Kepler Field
• The Luminosities and Distance Scales of Type II Cepheid and RR Lyrae variables
• Distance Scale Zero-Points from Galactic RR Lyrae Star Parallaxes
• A Problem with the Clustering of Recent Measures of the Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The composition of HB stars : RR Lyrae variables
• Metal abundances of RR Lyrae stars in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The VMC Survey IV. The LMC star formation history and disk geometry from four VMC tiles
• The RR Lyrae Period - K Luminosity relation for Globular Clusters: an observational approach
• The Chemical Compositions of Variable Field Horizontal Branch Stars: RR Lyrae Stars
• The VMC Survey. V. First results for Classical Cepheids
• Fundamental Properties and Distances of LMC Eclipsing Binaries: IV. HV 5936
• Theoretical models for Bump Cepheids
• The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Distance Scale
• CU Comae: a new field double-mode RR Lyrae, the most metal poor discovered to date
• A pulsational distance to Omega Centauri based on Near-Infrared Period-Luminosity relations of RR Lyrae stars
• The distance to the LMC cluster Reticulum from the K-band Period-Luminosity-Metallicity relation of RR Lyrae stars
• The infrared JHK light curves of RR Lyr
• Large Magellanic Cloud Bump Cepheids: Probing the Stellar Mass-Luminosity Relation
• Overview and stellar statistics of the expected Gaia Catalogue using the Gaia Object Generator
• The Araucaria Project. The Distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud from Near-Infrared Photometry of RR Lyrae Variables
• Chemical abundances of solar neighborhood RR Lyrae stars
• The VMC Survey - X. Cepheids, RR Lyrae stars and binaries as probes of the Magellanic System's structure
• A delta Scuti distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Distance to Galactic globulars using the near-infrared magnitudes of RR Lyrae stars: IV. The case of M5 (NGC5904)
• Fundamental Properties and Distances of LMC Eclipsing Binaries: III. EROS 1044
• A "pulsational" distance determination for the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Variable stars in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud: the photometric catalogue
• Preliminary results for RR Lyrae stars and Classical Cepheids from the Vista Magellanic Cloud (VMC) Survey
• Chemical abundances of metal-poor RR Lyrae stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• Pulsating variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds

Cited by in corpus (62)

• Gaia Data Release 2: Catalogue validation
• Gaia Data Release 1: Catalogue validation
• RR Lyrae stars as standard candles in the Gaia Data Release 2 Era
• The VMC Survey. XXV. The 3D structure of the Small Magellanic Cloud from Classical Cepheids
• The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program. I. An Independent Approach to the Extragalactic Distance Scale Using only Population II Distance Indicators
• Gaia Data Release 1. Testing the parallaxes with local Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars
• Old-Aged Stellar Population Distance Indicators
• The VMC survey - XXVI. Structure of the Small Magellanic Cloud from RR Lyrae stars
• Standard Galactic Field RR Lyrae. I. Optical to Mid-infrared Phased Photometry
• The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program. II. The Distance to IC 1613: The Tip of the Red Giant Branch and RR Lyrae Period-Luminosity Relations
• FSR 1716: A new Milky Way Globular Cluster confirmed using VVV RR Lyrae stars
• Photometric metallicity and distance estimates for $\sim$ 136,000 RR Lyrae stars from Gaia DR3
• Large Magellanic Cloud Near-Infrared Synoptic Survey. IV. Leavitt Laws for Type II Cepheid Variables
• Discovery of RR Lyrae Stars in the Nuclear Bulge of the Milky Way
• High-precision distance measurements with classical pulsating stars
• The VMC Survey. XIX. Classical Cepheids in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• RR Lyrae variables in Messier 53: Near-infrared Period--Luminosity relations and the calibration using Gaia Early Data Release 3
• The VVV Survey RR Lyrae Population in the Galactic Centre Region
• The VMC Survey -- XLII. Near-infrared period-luminosity relations for RR Lyrae stars and the structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The VMC survey - XXIII. Model fitting of light and radial velocity curves of Small Magellanic Cloud classical Cepheids
• Characterization of the VVV Survey RR Lyrae Population across the Southern Galactic Plane
• Galactic Bulge Population II Cepheids in the VVV Survey: Period-Luminosity Relations and a Distance to the Galactic Center
• New LZ and PW(Z) relations of RR Lyrae stars calibrated with Gaia EDR3 parallaxes
• A Near-infrared RR Lyrae census along the southern Galactic plane: the Milky Way's stellar fossil brought to light
• Establishing the Galactic Centre Distance Using VVV Bulge RR Lyrae Variables
• Confirmation and physical characterization of the new bulge globular cluster Patchick 99 from the VVV and Gaia surveys
• The Araucaria Project: The distance to the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy from near-infrared photometry of RR Lyrae stars
• The Carnegie RR Lyrae Program: Mid-infrared Period-Luminosity relations of RR Lyrae stars in Reticulum
• Kinematics and Multi Band Period-Luminosity-Metallicity Relation of RR Lyrae Stars via Statistical Parallax
• Infrared $K_s$-band Photometry of Field RR Lyrae Variable Stars
• Unveiling the nature of 12 new low-luminosity Galactic Globular Cluster Candidates
• On the variation of light curve parameters of RR Lyrae variables at multiple wavelengths
• A fresh look at the RR Lyrae population in the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy with Gaia
• Precise Empirical Determination of Metallicity Dependence of Near-infrared Period-Luminosity Relations for RR Lyrae Variables
• The VMC Survey -- XXXV. Model fitting of LMC Cepheid light curves
• Inspection of 19 globular cluster candidates in the Galactic bulge with the VVV survey
• A theoretical scenario for Galactic RR Lyrae in the Gaia database: constraints on the parallax offset
• The stellar photosphere-hydrogen ionization front interaction in Classical Pulsators: a theoretical explanation for observed period-colour relations
• Near-infrared Census of RR Lyrae variables in the Messier 3 globular cluster and the Period--Luminosity Relations
• Near-infrared photometry and spectroscopy of the low Galactic latitude globular cluster 2MASS-GC03
• The VMC Survey - XX. Identification of new Cepheids in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The Swift/UVOT Stars Survey. II. RR Lyrae Stars in M 3 and M 15
• New Near-Infrared Period-Luminosity-Metallicity Relations for Galactic RR Lyrae Stars Based on Gaia EDR3 Parallaxes
• The Orbit of the new Milky Way Globular Cluster FSR1716 = VVV-GC05
• APOGEE view of the globular cluster NGC 6544
• A hierarchical Bayesian model to infer PL(Z) relations using Gaia parallaxes
• The VMC Survey - XXXIII. The tip of the red giant branch in the Magellanic Clouds
• Multi-wavelength Photometric Study of RR Lyrae Variables in the Globular Cluster NGC 5272 (Messier 3)
• Photometric-Metallicity and Distance Estimates for $\sim$70,000 RR Lyrae Stars from the Zwicky Transient Facility
• Predicting light curves of RR Lyrae variables using artificial neural network based interpolation of a grid of pulsation models
• SMHASH: A new mid-infrared RR Lyrae distance determination for the Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxy Sculptor
• The VMC survey -- LIII. Data release #7. Complete survey data and data from additional programmes
• Variable stars in the VVV globular clusters. II. NGC6441, NGC6569, NGC6626 (M28), NGC6656 (M22), 2MASS-GC02, and Terzan10
• Exploring the Sagittarius stream with RR Lyrae Stars from Gaia Data Release 3
• Extraction of Physical Parameters of RRab Variables using Neural Network based Interpolator
• Pulsating stars in the VMC survey
• Gaia's Cepheids and RR Lyrae Stars and Luminosity Calibrations Based on Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution
• Optical and near-infrared pulsation properties of RR Lyrae and Population II Cepheid variables in the Messier 15 globular cluster
• New theoretical Period-Luminosity-Metallicity relations for RR Lyrae in the Rubin-LSST filters
• Variable stars in the Gaia era: Mira, RR Lyrae, delta and Type-II Cepheids
• San Pedro Meeting on Wide Field Variability Surveys: Some Concluding Comments
• Spectroscopic analysis of VVV CL001 cluster with MUSE