The Hertzsprung progression of Classical Cepheids in the Gaia era

A new fine grid of nonlinear convective pulsation models for the so-called "bump Cepheids" is presented to investigate the Hertzprung progression (HP) phenomenon shown by their light and radial pulsation velocity curves. The period corresponding to the center of the HP is investigated as a function of various model assumptions, such as the efficiency of super-adiabatic convection, the mass-luminosity relation, and the metal and helium abundances. The assumed mass-luminosity relation is found to significantly affect the phenomenon but variations in the chemical composition as well as in the stellar mass (at fixed mass-luminosity relation) also play a key role in determining the value of the HP center period. Finally, the predictive capability of the presented theoretical scenario is tested against observed light curves of bump Cepheids in the ESA Gaia database, also considering the variation of the pulsation amplitudes and of the Fourier parameters $R_{21}$ and $\Phi_{21}$ with the pulsation period. A qualitative agreement between theory and observations is found for what concerns the evolution of the light curve morphology as the period moves across the HP center, as well for the pattern in period-amplitude, period-$R21$ and period-$\Phi_{21}$ planes. A larger sample of observed Cepheids with accurate light curves and metallicities is required in order to derive more quantitative conclusions.Comment: Accepted for publication on MNRA

High-resolution Spectroscopic Metallicities of Milky Way Cepheid Standards and Their Impact on the Leavitt Law and the Hubble Constant

Milky Way Cepheid variables with accurate Hubble Space Telescope photometry have been established as standards for primary calibration of the cosmic distance ladder to achieve a percent-level determination of the Hubble constant ( H _0 ). These 75 Cepheid standards are the fundamental sample for investigation of possible residual systematics in the local H _0 determination due to metallicity effects on their period–luminosity relations. We obtained new high-resolution ( R ∼ 81,000), high-signal-to-noise (S/N ∼ 50–150) multiepoch spectra of 42 out of 75 Cepheid standards using the ESPaDOnS instrument at the 3.6 m Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope. Our spectroscopic metallicity measurements are in good agreement with the literature values with systematic differences up to 0.1 dex due to different metallicity scales. We homogenized and updated the spectroscopic metallicities of all 75 Milky Way Cepheid standards and derived their multiwavelength ( GVIJHK _s ) period–luminosity–metallicity and period–Wesenheit–metallicity relations using the latest Gaia parallaxes. The metallicity coefficients of these empirically calibrated relations exhibit large uncertainties due to low statistics and a narrow metallicity range (Δ[Fe/H] = 0.6 dex). These metallicity coefficients are up to 3 times better constrained if we include Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud and range between −0.21 ± 0.07 and −0.43 ± 0.06 mag dex ^−1 . The updated spectroscopic metallicities of these Milky Way Cepheid standards were used in the Cepheid–supernovae distance ladder formalism to determine H _0 = 72.9 ± 1.0 km s ^−1 Mpc ^−1 , suggesting little variation (∼0.1 km s ^−1 Mpc ^−1 ) in the local H _0 measurements due to different Cepheid metallicity scales