English

On the Deficiency of 8--10 Day Galactic Cepheids

Astrophysics 2009-10-30 v1

Abstract

The Galactic Cepheid period histogram has a strong dip between 8 and 10 days that has defied an explanation based on evolutionary and linear pulsation studies. We show here that this deficiency is caused by the instability of the nonlinear fundamental pulsation cycle in this period range. The strong metallicity dependence of this instability is consistent with the absence of a corresponding minimum in the Magellanic Cloud data. Our results also suggest that the Galactic Cepheids must have a large spread in metallicity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9707297,
  title  = {On the Deficiency of 8--10 Day Galactic Cepheids},
  author = {J. Robert Buchler and M. -J. Goupil and R. Piciullo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9707297},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters