Metallicities from high resolution spectra of 49 RR Lyrae Variables

Abstract

Accurate metallicities of RR Lyrae are extremely important in constraining period-luminosity-metallicity relationships (PLZ), particularly in the near-infrared. We analyse 69 high-resolution spectra of Galactic RR Lyrae stars from the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). We measure metallicities of 58 of these RR Lyrae stars with typical uncertainties of 0.13 dex. All but one RR Lyrae in this sample has accurate (σ_parallax ~ 10%) parallax from Gaia. Combining these new high resolution spectroscopic abundances with similar determinations from the literature for 93 stars, we present new PLZ relationships in WISE W1 and W2 magnitudes, and the Wesenheit magnitudes W(W1,V-W1) and W(W2,V-W2).

16 pages, 13 figures, accepted in MNRAS

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• RR Lyrae-based Distances for 39 Nearby Dwarf Galaxies Calibrated to Gaia eDR3
• Cepheid metallicity in the Leavitt law (C-MetaLL) survey -- III. Simultaneous derivation of the Gaia parallax offset and Period-Luminosity-Metallicity coefficients
• The GALAH survey: Tracing the Milky Way's formation and evolution through RR Lyrae stars
• RR Lyrae mid-infrared Period-Luminosity-Metallicity and Period-Wesenheit-Metallicity relations based on Gaia DR3 parallaxes
• Metallicity of Galactic RR Lyrae from Optical and Infrared Light Curves: II. Period-Fourier-Metallicity Relations for First Overtone RR Lyrae
• Precise Empirical Determination of Metallicity Dependence of Near-infrared Period-Luminosity Relations for RR Lyrae Variables
• Investigating Gaia EDR3 parallax systematics using asteroseismology of Cool Giant Stars observed by Kepler, K2, and TESS II. Deciphering Gaia parallax systematics using red clump stars
• RR Lyrae stars as probes of the outer Galactic halo: Chemical and kinematic analysis of a pilot sample
• Photometric-Metallicity and Distance Estimates for $\sim$70,000 RR Lyrae Stars from the Zwicky Transient Facility
• Leveraging Deep Learning for Time Series Extrinsic Regression in predicting photometric metallicity of Fundamental-mode RR Lyrae Stars
• A Study of Pulsation properties of 57 Non-Blazhko effect ab-type RR Lyrae stars with homogeneous metallicities from the LAMOST-Kepler/K2 survey
• On the Use of Field RR Lyrae as Galactic Probes -- VIII. Early Formation of the Galactic Spheroid
• Toward more accurate RR Lyrae metallicities
• Probing the Milky Way Halo with RR Lyrae Stars from Gaia Data Release 3