752 research outputs found
The Role of Opacities in Stellar Pulsation
We examine the role of opacities in stellar pulsation with reference to
Cepheids and RR Lyraes, and examine the effect of augmented opacities on the
theoretical pulsation light curves in key temperature ranges. The temperature
ranges are provided by recent experimental and theoretical work that have
suggested that the iron opacities have been considerably underestimated. For
Cepheids, we find that the augmented opacities have noticeable effects in
certain period ranges (around ) even though there is a
degeneracy with mixing length. We also find significant effects in theoretical
models of B-star pulsators.Comment: 6 pages, 3 Figures, Proceeding for the "Workshop on Astrophysical
Opacities
Large Magellanic Cloud Near-Infrared Synoptic Survey. II. The Wesenheit relations and their application to the Distance scale
We present new near-infrared Cepheid Period-Wesenheit relations in the LMC
using time-series observations from the Large Magellanic Cloud Near-Infrared
Synoptic Survey. We also derive opticalnear-infrared P-W relations using
and ~magnitudes from OGLE-III. We employ our new data to determine
an independent distance to the LMC of ~mag, using an absolute calibration of the Galactic
relations based on several distance determination methods and accounting for
the intrinsic scatter of each technique. We also derive new near-infrared
Period-Luminosity and Wesenheit relations for Cepheids in M31 using
observations from the PHAT survey. We use the absolute calibrations of the
Galactic and LMC relations to determine the distance modulus of M31,
~mag. We apply a simultaneous fit to Cepheids in
several Local Group galaxies covering a range of metallicities
(~dex) to determine a global slope of
-~mag/dex for the relation and obtain robust
distance estimates. Our distances are in good agreement with recent TRGB based
distance estimates and we do not find any evidence for a metallicity dependence
in the near-infrared P-W relations.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in The Astronomical
Journa
The additional-mode garden of RR Lyrae stars
Space-based photometric missions revealed a surprising abundance of
millimagnitude-level additional modes in RR Lyrae stars. The modes that appear
in the modulated fundamental-mode (RRab) stars can be ordered into four major
categories. Here we present the distribution of these groups in the Petersen
diagram, and discuss their characteristics and connections to additional modes
observed in other RR Lyrae stars.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings of the Joint
TASC2-KASC9-SPACEINN-HELAS8 Conference "Seismology of the Sun and the Distant
Stars 2016", to be published in EPJ Wo
Classical Cepheid Pulsation Models: IX. New Input Physics
We constructed several sequences of classical Cepheid envelope models at
solar chemical composition () to investigate the dependence of
the pulsation properties predicted by linear and nonlinear hydrodynamical
models on input physics. To study the dependence on the equation of state (EOS)
we performed several numerical experiments by using the simplified analytical
EOS originally developed by Stellingwerf and the recent analytical EOS
developed by Irwin. Current findings suggest that the pulsation amplitudes as
well as the topology of the instability strip marginally depend on the adopted
EOS.
We also investigated the dependence of observables predicted by theoretical
models on the mass-luminosity (ML) relation and on the spatial resolution
across the Hydrogen and the Helium partial ionization regions. We found that
nonlinear models are marginally affected by these physical and numerical
assumptions. In particular, the difference between new and old models in the
location as well as in the temperature width of the instability strip is on
average smaller than 200 K. However, the spatial resolution somehow affects the
pulsation properties. The new fine models predict a period at the center of the
Hertzsprung Progression (9.84 days) that reasonably agree with
empirical data based on light curves ( days;
\citealt{mbm92}) and on radial velocity curves ( days;
\citealt{mall00}), and improve previous predictions by Bono, Castellani, and
Marconi (2000, hereinafter BCM00).Comment: 35 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journa
Investigations of the Non-Linear LMC Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation with Testimator and Schwarz Information Criterion Methods
In this paper, we investigate the linearity versus non-linearity of the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC) Cepheid period-luminosity (P-L) relation using two
statistical approaches not previously applied to this problem: the testimator
method and the Schwarz Information Criterion (SIC). The testimator method is
extended to multiple stages for the first time, shown to be unbiased and the
variance of the estimated slope can be proved to be smaller than the standard
slope estimated from linear regression theory. The Schwarz Information
Criterion (also known as the Bayesian Information Criterion) is more
conservative than the Akaike Information Criterion and tends to choose lower
order models. By using simulated data sets, we verify that these statistical
techniques can be used to detect intrinsically linear and/or non-linear P-L
relations. These methods are then applied to independent LMC Cepheid data sets
from the OGLE project and the MACHO project, respectively. Our results imply
that there is a change of slope in longer period ranges for all of the data
sets. This strongly supports previous results, obtained from independent
statistical tests, that the observed LMC P-L relation is non-linear with a
break period at/around 10 days.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures and 3 tables, PASP accepte
Period-Luminosity Relations Derived from the OGLE-III Fundamental Mode Cepheids
In this Paper, we have derived Cepheid period-luminosity (P-L) relations for
the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) fundamental mode Cepheids, based on the data
released from OGLE-III. We have applied an extinction map to correct for the
extinction of these Cepheids. In addition to the VIW band P-L relations, we
also include JHK and four Spitzer IRAC band P-L relations, derived by matching
the OGLE-III Cepheids to the 2MASS and SAGE datasets, respectively. We also
test the non-linearity of the Cepheid P-L relations based on
extinction-corrected data. Our results (again) show that the LMC P-L relations
are non-linear in VIJH bands and linear in KW and the four IRAC bands,
respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures and 3 tables, ApJ accepte
Risk attitudes and informal employment in a developing economy
© 2012 Bennett et al.; licensee Springer. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0),which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.We model an urban labour market in a developing economy, incorporating workers’ risk attitudes. Trade-offs between risk aversion and ability determine worker allocation across formal and informal wage employment, and voluntary and involuntary self employment. Greater risk of informal wage non-payment can raise or lower informal wage employment, depending on the source of risk. Informal wage employment can be reduced by increasing detection efforts or by strengthening contract enforcement for informal wage payment. As the average ability of workers rises, informal wage employment first rises, then falls. Greater demand for formal production may lead to more involuntary self employment
Determination of Cepheid parameters by light-curve template-fitting
We describe techniques to characterise the light-curves of regular variable
stars by applying principal component analysis (PCA) to a training set of high
quality data, and to fit the resulting light-curve templates to sparse and
noisy photometry to obtain parameters such as periods, mean magnitudes etc. The
PCA approach allows us to efficiently represent the multi-band light-curve
shapes of each variable, and hence quantitatively describe the average
behaviour of the sample as a smoothly varying function of period, and also the
range of variation around this average.
In this paper we focus particularly on the utility of such methods for
analysing HST Cepheid photometry, and present simulations which illustrate the
advantages of our PCA template-fitting approach. These are: accurate parameter
determination, including light-curve shape information; simultaneous fitting to
multiple passbands; quantitative error analysis; objective rejection of
variables with non Cepheid-like light-curves or those with potential period
aliases.
We also use PCA to confirm that Cepheid light-curve shapes are systematically
different (at the same period) between the Milky Way (MW) and the Large and
Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC, SMC), and consider whether light-curve shape
might therefore be used to estimate the mean metallicities of Cepheid samples,
thus allowing metallicity corrections to be applied to derived distance
estimates.Comment: MNRAS in press: revised in light of referees comment
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