Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury. XIV. The Period-Age Relationship of Cepheid Variables in M31 Star Clusters

Abstract

We present a sample of 11 M31 Cepheids in stellar clusters, derived from the overlap of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) cluster catalog and the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) disk Cepheid catalog. After identifying the PS1 Cepheids in the HST catalog, we calibrate the PS1 mean magnitudes using the higher resolution HST photometry, revealing up to 1 magnitude offsets due to crowding effects in the ground-based catalog. We measure ages of the clusters by performing single stellar population fits to their color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) excluding their Cepheids. From these cluster age measurements, we derive an empirical period-age relation which agrees well with the existing literature values. By confirming this relation for M31 Cepheids, we justify its application in high-precision pointwise age estimation across M31.

14 pages, 16 figures, accepted by ApJ