LMC Cepheids radial velocities

J/A+A/534/A94) to 36 LMC and five SMC Cepheids and delineate new PL relations in the V,I,J, & K bands as well as in the Wesenheit indices in the optical and near-IR. We present 509 new and accurate radial velocity measurements for a sample of 22 LMC Cepheids, enlarging our earlier sample of 14 stars to include 36 LMC Cepheids. The new calibration of the IRSB method is directly tied to the recent HST parallax measurements to ten Milky Way Cepheids, and we find a LMC barycenter distance modulus of 18.45+/-0.04 (random error only) from the 36 individual LMC Cepheid distances.

In the J,K bands we find identical slopes for the LMC and Milky Way PL relations and only a weak metallicity effect on the zero points (consistent with a zero effect), metal poor stars being fainter. In the optical we find the Milky Way slopes are slightly shallower than the LMC slopes (but again consistent with no difference in the slopes) and small effects on the zero points. However, the important Wesenheit index in V,(V-I) shows a metallicity effect on the slope and on the zero point which is likely to be significant.

We find a significant metallicity effect on the Wvi index gamma(Wvi)=-0.23+/-0.10mag/dex as well as an effect on the slope. The K-band PL relation on the other hand is found to be an excellent extragalactic standard candle being metallicity insensitive in both slope and zero-point and at the same time being reddening insensitive and showing the least internal dispersion.