Magellanic Cloud Cepheids: Pulsational and evolutionary modelling vs. observations

¹ Physics Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA e-mail: buchler@phys.ufl.edu
² Konkoly Observatory, Budapest, Hungary e-mail: kollath@konkoly.hu
³ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France e-mail: beaulieu@iap.fr

Received: 20 January 2004
Accepted: 7 May 2004

Abstract

The pulsational properties of the Cepheid models along the evolutionary tracks from the Padova group (Girardi et al.), as calculated with our turbulent convective pulsation code, are in good agreement with the resonance constraints imposed by the observational OGLE-2 data of the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. Our study suggests that the resonance for the overtone Cepheids occurs for periods clustering around 4.2 d, in disagreement with the suggestion of Antonello & Poretti based on the observations of light curves, but in agreement with Kienzle et al. and Feuchtinger et al.  For the fundamental Cepheids the lowest order Fourier decomposition coefficients from the light curves, viz. R₂₁ and  can be used to locate the resonance region, but not so for the first overtone Cepheids. Here, the radial velocity curves can be used to locate the overtone resonance region, or in their absence, one needs to resort to numerical hydrodynamic modelling.