UNIGE document Doctoral Thesis
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Title

Classical Cepheids: High-precision Velocimetry, Cluster Membership, and the Effect of Rotation
Author
Anderson, Richard Irving
Directors
Eyer, Laurent
Mowlavi, Nami
Defense Thèse de doctorat : Univ. Genève, 2013 - Sc. 4627 - 2013/12/16
Abstract Classical Cepheids are crucial calibrators of the extragalactic distance scale. Despite the adjective 'classical' and their use as 'standard candles', many open problems remain and ensure a steady scientific interest in these objects. This thesis has contributed to the understanding of Cepheids via three different topics: (1) an unprecedented observational program dedicated to studying highly precise Doppler measurements (velocimetry), which as has enabled several observational discoveries; (2) a newly-developed astro-statistical method for conducting an all-sky census of Cepheids belonging to Galactic open clusters, which is suitable for the era of large surveys (big data) such as the ESA's Gaia space mission; (3) the first detailed investigation of the effect of rotation on populations of classical Cepheids using Geneva stellar evolution models, which provides an explanation for the 45-year old Cepheid mass discrepancy problem. Last, but not least, I investigated the implications of my work for the extragalactic distance scale.
Keywords Astronomy — Astrophysics — Stellar physics — Observational astronomy — Theoretical astrophyscis — Classical Cepheids — Distance scale — Gaia — Stellar evolution — Radial velocity
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:ch:unige-353564
Full text
Thesis (11.4 MB) - public document Free access
Structures
Faculté des sciences / Département d'astronomie
Research group Direction de recherche "Physique stellaire"
Project
Autre: GAIA
Citation
(ISO format) 		ANDERSON, Richard Irving. Classical Cepheids: High-precision Velocimetry, Cluster Membership, and the Effect of Rotation. Université de Genève. Thèse, 2013. doi: 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:35356 https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:35356

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Deposited on : 2014-04-04

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