text:
# Discussion: Star Formation Within Galaxies

## 1. Introduction

As is suggested by the title of this conference, star formation is one of the fundamental drivers of evolution in the Universe. It can be considered on scales ranging from individual stars, to starbursts, to the cosmic history of star formation itself. Roberto Terlevich has spent much of his career considering this entire range of star formation events and interpreting the underlying physical processes that drive the evolution of galaxies and the Universe.

Star forming events are telling us many things, some of which we understand, and many of which we still do not. In this sense, there are some key works that attempt fundamental interpretations of information from star-forming regions. Roberto has been a leader in this approach, and he, together with Jorge Melnick, became a front runner when proposing the “Size – Velocity Dispersion” diagramme applied to giant H ii regions (GHiiRs). The Terlevich & Melnick law (Terlevich & Melnick 1981) shows the existence of a correlation between radius and velocity dispersion in GHiiRs, following a $`R\sigma ^2`$ relation, the same as that for globular clusters and elliptical galaxies. Also the luminosity $`L`$ and $`\sigma `$ are related following the relation, $`L\sigma ^4`$. Despite the use of the diagrammes as distance indicators, as was their initial attempt, their interpretation of the big star-forming regions was important. From their findings, Terlevich & Melnick proposed that GHiiRs are virialized systems like globular clusters and elliptical galaxies, and the measured diagnostics indicate the mass of the total system.

Since then there has been much debate on the subject, both on the existence of the correlations themselves and on the interpretation provided. To reproduce the correlation and to confirm its validity have involved many of us for a number of years. We have been exploring the definition of the parameters, namely the radius, which is crucial to infer the other two, as well as the shape of the emission lines, which are used to get the $`\sigma `$ value (see Melnick et al. 1988; Muñoz-Tuñón 1994; Muñoz-Tuñón et al. 1995 and references therein).

Later on, the Terlevich & Melnick law was extended to H ii galaxies (Melnick et al. 1988; Telles & Terlevich 1993), and it was demonstrated that under some restriction on surface brightness (Fuentes-Masip et al. 2000) and analysis of the line profiles, the correlations still hold (see Telles et al. 2001; and Telles, this volume). This may indicate that the process of massive cluster formation is similar in both H ii galaxies and GHiiRs.

The interpretation of the supersonic broadening of emission lines (first reported by Smith & Weedman 1970) and its correlation with size is still an issue of debate. Stellar winds have been blamed for the supersonic width (see, e.g., Chu & Kennicutt 1994, debated in Tenorio-Tagle et al. 1996). Supersonic turbulence is also proposed as a responsible mechanism for the correlations and line broadening, and much work has been carried out both observationally (see the pionering work by Castañeda 1988; and more recently by Joncas 1999, Miesch et al. 1999, and references therein) and theoretically (see Vázquez-Semadeni 1999) to address this issue, which remains open.

What is interesting although a bit worrisome, is that the Terlevich & Melnick laws are used nowdays to infer physical parameters (namely the mass) of objects at high redshift. Somehow, and despite the controversies mentioned above, they have been successful in breaking out to become one of the important tools for interpreting star-forming galaxies at high $`z`$.

## 2. The Discussion

In this discussion session, we continue in the spirit of searching for fundamental interpretations of star-forming regions. Here, we consider star formation within galactic scales. We attempt to make sense of the various phenomena related to star formation, and we try to identify the dominant processes that affect it. In organizing the topics for the discussion, each of us (CMT & MSO) independently compiled a list of our favorite relevant questions. We found that these issues all appear to fall within the confines of the following three major questions:

* A. Is the top of the H ii LF (H ii LF) physically distinct? What determines spatial concentration of star formation and starbursts?
* B. How does massive star feedback affect the ISM and star formation?
* C. How do ISM properties such as metallicity, clumpiness, turbulence, and phase balance affect the H ii region luminosity function and star formation?

These three questions form a cycle: The H ii LF and especially, the most luminous star-forming regions, determine the nature of massive star feedback; feedback drives properties of the interstellar medium (ISM); and ISM properties presumably must affect the H ii LF. Is one of these three questions, A, B, or C, the fundamental determinant of the other two, and thereby of galactic star formation in general? How did this seemingly chicken-and-egg cycle originate? Are there actually external relevant issues that break the cycle? The discussion session raised a number of observational and theoretical issues that address these questions. In §6 below, we nominate our choice for The Fundamental Question.

## 3. A: The H ii LF and starbursts

The H ii region luminosity function is remarkably robust. Observations over a wide range of galaxy types consistently show that the differential LF is described by a power law of slope $`2\pm 0.3`$. This is found for disk galaxies (e.g., Kennicutt, Edgar, & Hodge 1989; Banfi et al. 1993; Rozas et al. 1996), including those with active nuclei (González-Delgado & Pérez 1997). Oey & Clarke (1998) show that variations in the H ii LF, including observed slope breaks and the apparently steeper slopes of Sa galaxies (Caldwell et al. 1991) are almost all consistently explained by a universal power law,

$$N(N_{})dN_{}N_{}^2dN_{},$$
(1)
for the number of clusters having $`N_{}`$ ionizing stars in the range $`N_{}`$ to $`N_{}+dN_{}`$. The only apparent exception appears to be somewhat flatter slopes of $`1`$ to $`1.5`$ found in a study of dwarf irregular galaxies (Youngblood & Hunter 1999), although the H ii region statistics in these small galaxies are more difficult. The universal power-law $`N_{}^2`$ is also seen for stellar clusters themselves (Elmegreen & Efremov 1997).

But what about the upper limit to the H ii LF? We see that it can vary between different galaxies: Oey & Clarke (1998) and Kennicutt et al. (1989) find that early-type spirals show a cut-off in the maximum luminosities of the star-forming regions around H$`\alpha `$ luminosities of $`\mathrm{log}L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }38`$ whereas late-type galaxies do not appear to show any maximum $`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$, often having H ii regions with $`\mathrm{log}L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }4142`$. In the most actively star-forming galaxies, are the most vigorous star-forming regions a physically distinct class of objects from the rest of the nebular population?

The most active star-forming regions in many disk galaxies are the circumnuclear regions, which are often associated with bar activity. Although the central galactic areas should host conditions that are significantly different from the remainder of the disk, Alonso-Herrero & Knapen (2001) found that the H ii LFs for circumnuclear H ii regions in 52 galaxies nevertheless show remarkably normal slopes. Thus, these luminous star-forming regions simply represent an extension to the H ii LF of the disks. Alonso-Herrero reports that preliminary analysis of photometric broadband observations of luminous infrared galaxies thus far confirms that the parent stellar clusters likewise appear to be scaled-up versions of those found in less luminous H ii regions. Direct observations of super star clusters in starburst galaxies also confirms the $`N_{}^2`$ power law in this regime (Meurer et al. 1995).

Nevertheless, it is apparent that the circumnuclear H ii regions are systematically far brighter than the disk objects. This implies that nuclear conditions favor the formation of the most luminous regions. Another environment that favors highly luminous star formation is found in gas-rich dwarf galaxies, which also host some of the largest star-forming regions. The high-density, high-pressure, high-shear environment near galactic nuclei would appear to greatly contrast with the environment typically associated with the ISM in dwarf galaxies. Could these two types of environment have common dominant variables that induce energetic star formation? Are there differences between the giant H ii regions formed in these respective conditions? From the discussion, it emerged that the formation of these luminous objects is probably determined by more complex factors than a single determining parameter like gas density, or else it would have been apparent by now. More likely, a combination of factors may dominate, for example gas density and freefall timescale, which together could produce similar conditions and high star formation in both of the environments identified above.

Another factor that must clearly limit the maximum H ii region luminosities is the physical size of the host galaxy. The largest scales of star formation approach the physical scales of the host galaxy, for example in starbursts and H ii galaxies. Does this factor affect the properties of the most luminous H ii regions? There appears to be no evidence to date that it does. This suggests that star formation can be a highly localized effect, that need not be strongly influenced by the extended ISM properties of the host galaxies.

Moreover, evolution clearly affects parameter measurements of massive complexes. H ii regions evolve, both in luminosity and shape. In nearby and resolved systems we see nets of loops, shells, filaments (for example, as seen in 30 Dor in the LMC or NGC 604 in M33), which are undoubtedly probes of their advanced stage of evolution (see Muñoz-Tuñón et al. 1996 for a discussion). Therefore, determination of the parameters relating to the most massive regions should include observations at earlier evolutionary stages (e.g., IR sources), in order to properly understand the upper limit of the the H ii LF. At present, there may exist an important bias towards more evolved systems.

## 4. B: Massive star feedback and the ISM

The properties of massive star feedback vary, depending on the characteristics of the parent star formation, and host galaxy ISM and environment. For ordinary star-forming galaxies, continuous low-level or moderate star formation following the H ii LF may produce only pockets of hot ($`10^6`$ K) gas in supernova-driven superbubbles, and some spatially scattered nebulae within a diffuse warm ($`10^4`$ K) ionized medium (WIM). However, feedback from high star-formation rates can be strongly dependent on, e.g., the spatial distribution of the star formation, and the properties of the surrounding galactic halo or intergalactic medium (IGM). Clarke & Oey (2002; see Oey & Clarke, this volume) show that, for the same high star formation rate, events that are spatially distributed and following the H ii LF will shred the neutral ISM into worms and filaments, thereby strongly enhancing the escape of ionizing photons and metals from galaxies. Centrally concentrated star formation, on the other hand, would allow the escape of photons and material only through the opening angle of the central superwind cone. The ISM in the latter case would remain largely intact outside the central region. Similarly, the fate of hot gas and newly synthesized metals depends not only on the luminosity of the star-forming regions relative to the galactic gravitational potential, but also on the halo and external medium. Silich & Tenorio-Tagle (2001) and Kunth et al. (2002) emphasize the difficulty in ejecting material in the presence of external IGM pressure (see also the Tenorio-Tagle & Vílchez Discussion session, this volume).

Whether or not photons and material escape from galaxies will profoundly affect the ISM of the parent galaxies themselves. If ionizing photons cannot escape, then they are absorbed in the ISM and contribute to a more strongly ionized diffuse WIM. Presumably this heating will act to inhibit star formation. If hot gas and metals cannot escape the galaxy, they too, are returned to the host ISM. The metals will enhance cooling and thereby presumably enhance star formation; the hot gas will enhance mixing of these metals throughout the galaxy, depending on its spatial distribution. In short, the phase balance of the ISM is largely determined by the character of the massive star feedback. Interstellar turbulence is another consequence of mechanical feedback that must strongly affect star formation. While turbulent motion itself inhibits gravitational collapse, turbulence also restructures the multiphase ISM, perhaps promoting the formation of cold clouds.

On global scales, the above arguments suggest both negative and positive effects of feedback on star formation. Which dominates? On more localized scales, there are well-documented examples in the Large Magellanic Cloud of sequential star formation, apparently triggered by expanding superbubble shells (e.g., Dopita et al. 1985; Parker et al. 1992; Oey & Massey 1995). Circumnuclear rings or ring galaxies show evidence of propagating star formation, for example, NGC 1068 (Myers & Scoville 1987), probably triggered by nuclear activity; and the Cartwheel Galaxy (Marcum et al. 1992), triggered by a galaxy merger. Díaz reports tentative evidence of both radial and azimuthal age gradients in circumnuclear H ii regions. Yet, as often argued for star formation at the molecular cloud scale, massive star feedback is also thought to destroy clouds and suppress star formation. On global scales, feedback in dwarf galaxies may result in the blowaway of a significant fraction of the ISM, also inhibiting star formation. Understanding how feedback affects star formation on both large and small scales remains a key open question.

## 5. C: The ISM and the H ii LF

How do ISM properties yield the $`N_{}^2`$ power law and resulting H ii LF? This is a question that parallels the long-standing problem regarding the origin of the stellar initial mass function (IMF). Presumably fundamental properties of the ISM determine the H ii LF. However, the above discussion in §3 emphasized that $`N_{}^2`$ power law is remarkably constant, even for extremely different populations of objects, including low-luminosity H ii regions in early-type galaxies, and high-luminosity circumnuclear regions. This suggests that the conditions causing the parent cluster membership function are remarkably insensitive to ISM conditions. Since fundamental ISM parameters are density, pressure, and temperature, Lynden-Bell offers the analogy of star formation as a phase transition. A more complex phase transition than that of simple matter, to be sure, but perhaps a secure place to return to first principles?

Melnick noted the similarity between the $`N_{}^2`$ power law and the IMF power-law index of $`2.35`$ (Salpeter 1955). Fractal structure has long been a popular model for the ISM, and he suggested that the –2 power law simply results from a fractal default for complexity in nature. A difficult aspect of this model is that it appears to be unrelated to any specific physics, and therefore can only be tied to physical properties by circumstantial evidence. One of the most popular links is between fractals and interstellar turbulence (e.g., Norman & Ferrara 1996; see Oey 2002), since the latter yields a similar power law for the spatial power spectrum. However, it is now emerging that much of the large-scale neutral hydrogen in the ISM is strongly filamentary (Braun 1997; Elmegreen et al. 2001) which is difficult to reconcile with a simple fractal structure (Elmegreen et al. 2001).

The discussion inevitably moved to the analogous problem regarding the origin and constancy of the IMF. While some observations, for example, inferences of star formation rates in distant galaxies, are most consistent with a top-heavy IMF, there is little direct evidence locally for variations. Resolved observations of stellar clusters and unresolved observations of galaxies, for example, the existence of the Fundamental Plane, almost all point to minimal variations in the IMF.

## 6. The Fundamental Question

In the above cycle $`(\mathrm{A})(\mathrm{B})(\mathrm{C})(\mathrm{A})`$, is one of these three issues more truly fundamental than the other two? For example, it is hard to conclude that Question (B), the effect of feedback, is fundamental since feedback cannot occur without stars. On the other hand, without feedback-induced properties like turbulence and metallicity, the ISM would be drastically different than is found in present star-forming conditions. Thus primordial conditions may be excluded from this cycle in any case. Furthermore, preliminary evidence emerging from the above discussion shows that the $`N_{}^2`$ cluster membership function and signature H ii LF are remarkably constant; thus the short, radical(!) answer to Question (C) might be that ISM properties don’t affect and the H ii LF and the cluster membership function.

For our present state of knowledge, Question (A) therefore emerges from this Discussion as outstanding from the cycle. We might reword it: “Is the slope of the cluster membership function universal?” The extreme conditions of the most luminous star-forming regions naively would seem to offer a regime where variations might be found, analogous to the suggestions that this energetic regime promotes an altered, top-heavy stellar IMF. To date, however, the evidence does not show any such variations in the $`N_{}^2`$ law. What is the origin of this law, and does it have any relation to ISM properties? We hope future discussions and arguments will focus on, and resolve, this issue.

### Acknowledgments.

Our congratulations to the organizers for such a beautiful meeting. We suppose Roberto made it easier by having such a bunch of good friends… We thank Elena Terlevich for taking notes during this discussion, which have been very useful for us. Thanks also to Guillermo Tenorio-Tagle for reading the manuscript.

## References

Alonso-Herrero, A. & Knapen, J. H. 2001, AJ, 122, 1350

Banfi, M., Chincarini, G., & Henry, R. B. C. 1993, A&A, 280, 373

Braun, R. 1997, ApJ, 484, 637

Caldwell, N., Kennicutt, R. C., Phillips, A. C., & Schommer, R. A. 1991, ApJ, 370, 526

Castañeda, H. O., 1988, ApJS, 67, 93.

Clarke, C. J. & Oey, M. S. 2002, MNRAS, in press

Chu, Y-H., & Kennicutt, R.C., 1994, ApJ., 425, 720.

Dopita, M. A., Mathewson, D. S., & Ford, V. L. 1985, ApJ, 297, 599

Elmegreen, B. G. & Efremov, Y. N. 1997, ApJ, 480, 235

Elmegreen, B. G., Kim, S., & Staveley-Smith 2001, ApJ, 548, 749

Fuentes-Masip, O., Muñoz-Tuñón, C., Castañeda, H. O., & Tenorio-Tagle, G., 2000, AJ, 120, 752.

González-Delgado, R. M. & Pérez, E. 1997, ApJS, 108, 199

Joncas, G., 1999, in Interstellar Turbulence, J. Franco & A. Carramiñana eds., (Cambridge: CUP), 154

Kennicutt, R. C., Edgar, B. K., & Hodge, P. W. 1989, ApJ, 337, 761

Kunth, D., Legrand, F., Tenorio-Tagle, G., Silich, S., Mas-Hesse, J. M., & Cerviño, M. 2002, Ap&SS, 281, 261

Marcum, P. M., Appleton, P. N., & Higdon, J. L. 1992, ApJ, 399, 57

Meurer, G. R., Heckman, T. M., Leitherer, C., Kinney, A., Robert, C., & Garnett, D. R. 1995, AJ, 110, 2665

Melnick, J., Terlevich, R. & Moles, M., 1988, MNRAS, 235, 297

Miesch, M. S., Scalo, J. & Bally, J., 1999, ApJ, 524

Muñoz-Tuñón, C., 1994, in Violent Star Formation: From 30 Doradus to QSOs, G. Tenorio-Tagle (ed.), (Cambridge: CUP), 25

Muñoz-Tuñón, C., Gavryusev, V. & Castañeda, H. O. 1995, AJ, 110, 1630

Muñoz-Tuñón, C., Tenorio-Tagle, G., Castañeda, H. O. & Terlevich, R. 1996, AJ, 112, 1636

Myers, S. T. & Scoville, N. Z. 1987, ApJ, 312, L39

Norman, C. A. & Ferrara, A. 1996, ApJ, 467, 280

Oey, M. S. 2002, in Seeing Through the Dust: The Detection of H i and the Exploration of the ISM in Galaxies, R. Taylor, T. Landecker, & A. Willis (eds.), (San Francisco: ASP), in press

Oey, M. S. & Clarke, C. J. 1998, AJ, 115, 1543

Oey, M. S. & Massey, P. 1995, ApJ, 452, 210

Parker, J. W., Garmany, C. D., Massey, P., & Walborn, N. R. 1992, AJ, 103, 1205

Rozas, M., Beckman, J. E., & Knapen, J. H. 1996, A&A, 307, 735

Salpeter, E. E. 1955, ApJ, 121, 161

Silich, S. & Tenorio-Tagle, G. 2001, ApJ, 552, 91

Smith, M. & Weedman, D., 1970, ApJ., 161, 33

Telles, E. & Terlevich, R., 1993, Ap&SS, 205, 49

Telles, E., Muñoz-Tuñón, C & Tenorio-Tagle, G., 2001, ApJ, 548, 671-680

Tenorio-Tagle, G., Muñoz-Tuñón, C & Cid Fernandes, R., 1996, ApJ., 456, 264

Terlevich, R. & Melnick, J., 1981, MNRAS, 195, 839.

Vázquez-Semadeni, E. 1999, in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy: Molecular Chemistry & Physics in Space, W. F. Wall, A. Carramiñana, and L. Carrasco (eds.), (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 161

Youngblood, A. J. & Hunter, D. A. 1999, ApJ, 519, 55


format: text

text:
# Granular spirals on erodible sand bed submitted to a circular fluid motion

## I Introduction

Many experiments have been dedicated to the study of fluid flows between rotating stainless-steel disks jarre ; hoffmann ; gauthier ; faller . Three experimental configurations can be found in the literature: two contra-rotative disks; the upper disk rotating while the other is at rest; and the lower disk rotating, the other being at rest. For a given Reynolds number, i.e. at a given distance from the center of the plate schlichting , a transition in the boundary layer occurs. The encountered instabilities are of Kàrmàn, Ekman or Bödewadt types and may lead to one of the following patterns: (i) concentric circles at a low rotation speed (ii) spirals at a medium rotation speed and (iii) a disordered state at large rotation speeds gauthier .

On the other hand, one can note the growing interest of the statistical physics community to the granular state. Particularly, the ripple formation on sand bed eroded by a fluid such as air or water has become a largely studied phenomenon frette ; stegner ; makse ; thomas ; farzam . Despite the familiar aspect of the ripples, the physical mechanisms involved in their formation are related to complex phenomena of granular transport such as avalanches, saltation, reptation and suspension bagnold1 .

In the present paper, both subjects will be combined in a single experiment. We will study the stability of a granular surface submitted to a circular fluid flow. In the next section, the experimental setup will be described. In Section III, we will present the results, and discuss them in Section IV. Finally, a summary of our findings is given in Section V.

## II Experimental setup

Our experimental setup is illustrated in Fig.1 and consists of a horizontal circular plate connected by a belt to an engine. The rotation speed can be adjusted from 8 rpm up to 100 rpm. A cylindrical container (radius $`R=11`$ cm) filled with water and sand (mean grain diameter $`d=282.5\mu `$m) is placed in the center of the plate and put into rotation. When the rotation is brutally stopped, the sand bed remains fixed while the water continues its inertial circular motion. The shear stress applied to the sand by the water flow initiates various grain motions: saltation, reptation and suspension. After a short time (typically 2s), current ripples are formed \[see Fig.1 bottom\].

A CCD camera is placed on the top of the plate and records an image of the sand bed. In order to avoid shadow effects, the container circumference is homogeneously illuminated. An annular luminescent tube with a radius of 12 cm is placed horizontally around the container, at the level of the sand-water interface. We assume that the height of sand is given by the intensity of the pixels on the grayscale images, due to this side lightning. Within this assumption, the landscape is given with an accuracy of $`0.7d200\mu m`$.

The parameters of our experiment are: (i) the height of water $`h`$ over the sand bed before rotation, and (ii) the rotation speed $`\omega `$ of the container. Moreover, one should note that the Reynolds number varies on the granular surface as a function of the distance $`0<r<R`$ from the center of the container schlichting . Therefore, the Reynolds number $`R_e`$ we will use can be written as

$$R_e=\sqrt{r^2\frac{\omega }{\nu }},$$
(1)
where $`\nu `$ is the kinematic viscosity of the water, i.e. $`\nu =10^6`$ m2 s-1.

## III Results

We have performed experiments with values of $`\omega `$ ranging from 29 rpm to 71 rpm, and values of $`h`$ ranging from 1.05 cm to 3.36 cm. For each experiment, an image of the landscape has been taken. On each image, we have extracted transversal profiles of the landscape at 50 different $`r`$ values, i.e. different $`R_e`$ values. Figure 2 presents typical data for two values of the Reynolds number: $`R_e=10.4`$ ($`r`$=3 cm) and $`R_e=34.6`$ ($`r`$=10 cm). For small Reynolds number values, the profile is very noisy and no modulation is observed. The noise comes from the irregularities of the granular surface. On the contrary, we have noticed a periodic profile for large values of $`R_e`$. The transition between noisy and periodic regions is well defined and occurs at a given critical radius $`r_c`$. The profiles are periodic above $`r_c`$ and noisy elsewhere. This kind of behavior is characteristic of the emergence of an instability in the sand-water interface. This is similar to what is observed in the case of an instability in the boundary layer of a fluid flowing over a stainless-steel disk faller .

For all tested values of both parameters $`h`$ and $`\omega `$, we have noticed the appearance of that instability for high Reynolds number values. However, we have remarked that the pattern formed on the granular landscape depends on the experimental parameters. Indeed, we have recorded three kinds of patterns : (i) one spiral; (ii) two superposing spirals, one having the arms close to the tangential direction to the container circumference, the other being more open; and (ii) two paired spirals having the same number of arms and having their arms coupled one to the other. Figures 3a-c illustrate those different patterns.

We have constructed a phase diagram giving the pattern as a function of both $`\omega `$ and $`h`$ parameters. One should note \[see Figure 4\] how the pattern depends on the rotation speed $`\omega `$ and is less dependent on the height of water $`h`$. Looking for details in images corresponding to the phase diagram, we have concluded that the patterns evolve as follows. At a low rotation speed ($`\omega 35`$ rpm), spirals are created above a critical radius $`r_c`$. An increase of $`\omega `$ causes the increase of the spiral arm angles, as we will see further. At medium rotation speeds ($`35<\omega <45`$ rpm) a second spiral appears. The arms of this second spiral are nearly tangential to the cylinder circumference. As a consequence, one observes two superposed spirals. If the rotation speed is increased again ($`\omega 45`$ rpm), the second spiral becomes more and more open, so that both spirals are paired.

### III.1 Fourier analysis

In order to determine the geometrical properties of the patterns, we have decomposed the data of the different profiles within Fourier series, according to the equation

$$f(x)=\frac{a_0}{2}+\underset{m=1}{\overset{N}{}}\left[a_m\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{2\pi mx}{L}\right)+b_m\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{2\pi mx}{L}\right)\right],$$
(2)
where $`f(x)`$ is the height of sand at position $`x`$ along the circle of radius $`r`$, $`m`$ is the Fourier mode, $`a_m`$ and $`b_m`$ are the Fourier coefficients. The sum is extended over $`N`$ terms, where $`N`$ is equals to the number of points in the discretization of $`f(x)`$. Typically, $`N2000`$. One should note that the geometry of our experimental setup allows us to use Fourier approximation without restriction. From this approximation, we can compute the statistical weight $`A_m`$ of a given mode $`m`$ in the series by

$$A_m=\sqrt{a_m^2+b_m^2}.$$
(3)
The knowledge of all weights $`A_m`$ allows us to determine the mean amplitude $`A`$ of the ripples

$$A=\sqrt{\underset{m=1}{\overset{N}{}}A_m^2}.$$
(4)
The mean wavelength of the patterns at the radius $`r`$ is then given by

$$\lambda =2\pi r\left(\frac{_{m=1}^NA_mm}{_{m=1}^NA_m}\right)^1,$$
(5)
which is the circumference at the considered radius $`r`$, divided by the statistical mean of the weighted modes $`m`$. It is important to note that practically, the sums are calculated from $`m=4`$ instead of $`m=1`$. In such a way, we remove the large modulations of the surface. Those large oscillations are artifacts due to the preparation of the sand bed before the experiment is started. Such problem is also encountered in other experiments dealing with granular surfaces frette ; stegner .

### III.2 Critical radius $`r_c`$

With the help of Fourier decompositions, one can easily find the value of $`r_c`$. For all radii $`r<r_c`$, the profiles are noisy. In such a noise, all frequencies have the same probability of being found in the profiles (white noise). Mathematically, this fact results in Fourier series which are sums of $`sinus`$ and $`cosinus`$ with nearly the same statistical weights $`A_m`$. On the contrary, for $`rr_c`$ the periodic shape of the profiles implies the existence of a characteristic mode $`M`$ in each profile. The value of $`M`$ is equals to the number of ripples in the profile. The plot of $`A_m`$ as a function of the Fourier modes will thus exhibits a peak corresponding to the mode $`M`$. Eventually, the critical radius $`r_c`$ is equal to the radius where the first peak is recorded. Practically, $`r_c`$ is defined as the radius where the highest peak reaches a defined threshold value.

In Figure 5, we report the amplitudes $`A_m`$ of the different Fourier modes as a function of the radius $`r`$. One can see that peaks appear only for $`r4.1`$ cm, meaning $`r_c=4.1`$ cm. Notice that in this case, $`M6`$ for $`r=r_c`$.

We have studied the dependence of $`r_c`$ on the height of water and the rotation speed. Figure 6 presents the mean ripple amplitude $`A`$ as a function of the radius $`r`$ for different values of $`h`$ at fixed $`\omega =41.38`$ rpm. First, one should note that the $`r`$-axis can be decomposed in 2 distinct regions: (i) If $`r<r_c`$, all curves are nearly constant. This is the stable part of the sand-water interface. (ii) For $`rr_c`$, all curves grow. Notice that the critical radius is the same for all curves. This means that the birth of the instability is not controlled by the height of water. Moreover, one can see how $`A`$ is inversely proportional to $`h`$. Thus, the higher the velocity gradient of the water is, the larger are the ripples.

Plotting the critical radius $`r_c`$ as a function of the rotation speed $`\omega `$ \[see Figure 7\] shows that the instability rises as sooner as the fluid speed is high. Fitting the data with the single power law

$$r_c(\omega )=a+b\omega ^\tau ,$$
(6)
we found that $`\tau `$ is roughly equal to -1/2. From the definition Eq.(1), we deduce that the critical Reynolds number $`R_{e_c}`$ is constant and is

$$R_{e_c}=\sqrt{r_c^2\frac{\omega }{\nu }}16.$$
(7)
### III.3 Ripple wavelength $`\lambda `$

Using Eq.(5), we have studied the evolution of the mean ripple wavelength $`\lambda `$ from the center of the plate, to the sides of the container. Below the critical radius $`r_c`$, no modulation is observed and $`\lambda `$ is nearly zero.

Within the unstable part of the interface, the measurement of the mean ripple wavelength is perturbated by the presence of “defects”. Indeed, when two ripples collapse a jump of $`\lambda `$ is recorded. We have noticed that on an image, the defects are almost situated at the same radius. Their role is to adjust the number of ripples to the shear conditions. In order to increase the accuracy of the measurements, we have decomposed the whole $`r`$-range into intervals which do not contain such “defects”.

We have found that $`\lambda `$ grows linearly with the distance form the center of the plate:

$$\lambda =\beta r\text{for}r>r_c.$$
(8)
This observation is consistent with the existence of spirals with constant arm numbers in the considered intervals. Moreover, we have noticed that the growth rate $`\beta `$ does not depend on the height of water but decreases with the rotation speed $`\omega `$, according to a power law with power exponent -1. Eventually, we see that the mean ripple wavelength obeys the scaling

$$\lambda \frac{r}{\omega }\text{for}r>r_c.$$
(9)
In Figure 8, we have plotted $`\beta `$ as a function of $`\omega `$ as well as a fit using Eq.(9).

An interpretation of the decrease of $`\beta `$ can be deduced from the phase diagram illustrated in Fig.4. As the height of water is changed at fixed rotation speed, no major modification of the patterns is observed (nearly same wavelength). The consequence is that $`\beta `$ does not depend on $`h`$. On the other way, we have seen that $`\omega `$ may cause the appearance of a second spiral. Such an occurrence results in a larger amount of spiral arms, i.e. in a larger number of ripples. Therefore, the mean ripple wavelength is lower when $`\omega `$ increases. The small values of $`\beta `$ at large $`\omega `$ values clearly shows this fact.

An important observation is that no well-defined transition is observed in the curve giving $`\lambda `$ as a function of $`\omega `$. Indeed, the decrease of the mean ripple wavelength seems to be continuous. The way of appearance of the so-called second spiral is one reason explaining this result. At $`\omega 35`$ rpm, the second spiral is formed but has a smaller amplitude than the former spiral. The statistical weight of its wavelength is thus smaller than those of the former spiral. As the rotation speed increases, the second spiral amplitude growth. Eventually, the measured mean ripple wavelength corresponds to the number of spiral arms of both spirals, i.e. becomes at least twice those measured when only one spiral was observed. One should note that since $`\lambda `$ is divided by a factor larger than $`2`$, we see that the hydrodynamics also tends to increase the number of arms of each spiral. This has been mentioned here-above as the origin of the “defects” in the spiral patterns.

### III.4 Azimuthal angle $`\epsilon `$

Going deeper into the geometrical description of the patterns, we have measured the azimuthal angle $`\epsilon `$ of the spiral arms. This parameter is defined at a given point by the angle between a ripple crest and the tangential line to the circle centered on the plate and passing by the considered point \[see Fig.9\]. Practically, $`\epsilon `$ is measured between two concentric circles with radii differing from $`\mathrm{\Delta }r=0.25`$ cm.

In order to determine the influence of the experimental parameters $`h`$, $`\omega `$ and $`r`$ on the azimuthal angle $`\epsilon `$ , we have proceeded as follows. At a given distance from the center of the container, i.e. a given $`r`$-value, and a given $`\omega `$-value, we measured $`\epsilon `$ for different values of the height of water $`h`$. This process is repeated all over the container diameter. Then, the height of water $`h`$ was fixed, and the procedure explained above was applied for different values of the rotation speed $`\omega `$.

We have noticed that the azimuthal angle $`\epsilon `$ increases with the distance from the center of the container as well as with the height of water $`h`$ and the rotation speed $`\omega `$. Moreover, the measurements collapse when they are plotted as a function of the product $`h\omega r`$ \[see Fig.10\]. It appears that the experimental data could be considered as following a power law as well as saturating exponentially. We have chosen the exponential law in order to avoid the azimuthal angle to grow to infinity. The fit of the data sets shows that

$$\epsilon =\epsilon _M\alpha _1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{h\omega r}{\alpha _2}\right),$$
(10)
where $`\epsilon _M=47^{}\pm 8^{}`$ is the asymptotical value of the azimuthal angle at high $`h\omega r`$ values, $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ being fitting parameters.

From Eq.(10), one can see that the azimuthal angle $`\epsilon `$ meets the horizontal axis, says $`\epsilon `$ =0, for the critical $`h\omega r`$ product value $`p_c`$

$$p_c=\alpha _2\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\epsilon _M}{\alpha _1}\right)=\mathrm{3\hspace{0.17em}10}^4\text{ m}^2\text{ s}^1.$$
(11)
Since the azimuthal angle is zero at this critical value $`p_c`$, concentric circles must be observed for $`h\omega r=p_c`$ and spirals with azimuthal angles $`\epsilon <0`$ for values of $`h\omega r<p_c`$. However, we have never observed such patterns.

An interpretation of this can be deduced from the consideration of the fluid momentum $`P=mv`$, where $`m`$ is the mass of fluid, and $`v`$ its linear speed. Considering that $`\rho =\mathrm{1\hspace{0.17em}10}^3`$ kg m-3 is the density of the fluid, and that the radius of the container $`R=0.11`$ m, one gets

$$P=\rho \pi R^2h\omega r,$$
(12)
what contains the $`h\omega r`$ term. This thus means that the value of the azimuthal angle $`\epsilon `$ is governed by the fluid momentum, according to Eq.(10). Combining Eq.(10) and Eq.(12) we are able to predict the fluid momentum corresponding to concentric circles. This critical momentum $`P_c`$ reads

$$P_c=\rho \pi R^2p_c=0.011\text{ kg}\text{ m}\text{ s}^1.$$
(13)
For fluid momentum $`P<P_c`$, spirals with negative azimuthal angles must be created.

The fact that no concentric circles are observed comes from the lack of granular transport for such small fluid momentum. Indeed, ripples are only created when the grains are transported in the fluid, and this is only possible if the fluid shear stress exceeds a certain threshold. Typically, ripples are observed only for fluid momentum $`P>0.1`$ kg m s-1.

## IV Discussion

The instability encountered in our experiment creates patterns very similar to those observed in the case of a fluid flowing over a disk at rest jarre ; faller ; hoffmann ; gauthier . The instability resulting in such patterns takes place in the Bödewadt boundary layer, i.e. in the boundary layer over the bottom disk. The patterns we observe are also similar to those observed in the Thomas’ experiment thomas . In the latter experiment the ripples are created by an acceleration of the container. The acceleration rate $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega `$ is somewhat analogue to the rotation speed $`\omega `$ presented here. Hereafter, our experiment and the Thomas one will be referred as “granular” one, while jarre ; faller ; hoffmann ; gauthier  will be defined as “fluid” experiments.

Despite the similarity between the patterns, it is not obvious that the spiral patterns observed here are of the same nature as the fluid ones or as the Thomas ones. We are now attempting to make some comparison in order to differentiate the different kinds of instabilities. It is important to notice that Bödewadt flows are very complicated to create experimentally. As a consequence, there is a poor amount of data.

The major difference between the “granular experiments” and the fluid ones is the dependence of the mean wavelength of the patterns on the distance from the center \[see Table 1\]. In Thomas and our experiments, the mean pattern wavelength increases with distance from the center while it is nearly constant in fluid experiments. However, the order of magnitude of $`\lambda `$ for all experiments is about 1 cm.

The values of the azimuthal angle of the spirals observed in fluid experiments range between $`13^{}`$ and $`17^{}`$, what is nearly constant compared to the angles measured by Thomas (between $`20^{}`$ to $`70^{}`$) and the angles we measured (from $`4^{}`$ at low fluid momentum to $`45^{}`$ at higher fluid momentum). The most important observation is that $`\epsilon `$ increases with the radius in our experiment, while it decreases in thomas .

Measurements of critical Reynolds numbers show that $`R_{e_c}`$ decreases with the rotation speed in all experiments. However, the dependence is very slight in fluid experiments, compared to what is observed in granular ones. Moreover, $`R_c40`$ in fluid experiments and is only around $`16`$ here.

Scaling

| Parameters | Here | Thomasthomas | Bödewadtschlichting |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\lambda `$ | $`r/\omega `$ | $`r`$ | $`cte`$ |
| $`\epsilon `$ | $`h\omega r`$ | $`r^{0.5}`$ | $`cte`$ |
| $`R_{e_c}`$ | $`16`$ | $`\omega ^{0.1}`$ | $`40`$ |

From the comparison of the orders of magnitude and the behaviors, we can conclude that the instability observed here is not the signature of an instability in the boundary layer. What we observed here are ripples, similar to those observed in coastal areas, but in a rotating frame. Thomas pointed out the same conclusions. In both cases the spiral shape formed by the ripple crests may be due to the presence of centrifugal forces and other effects caused by the motion of the grains in the fluid. However, due to the differences between the experimental procedures followed in thomas  and here, the created patterns do not behave in the same way.

## V Summary

An experimental study of the instability rising on a sand-water interface has been proposed. The formation of the spiral patterns have been shown and have been described with the help of a phase diagram.

The properties of the critical radius where the instability forms have been studied. The critical radius $`r_c`$ is found to decrease with the rotation speed of the container, according a square law, giving a critical Reynolds number equals to $`R_{e_c}16`$.

The mean ripples wavelength is proportional to the distance from the center of the container and inversely proportional to the rotation speed of the container. Studying the azimuthal angles of the spirals, we have shown that this angle is governed by the momentum of the fluid $`P=mv`$, where $`m`$ is the mass of fluid, and $`v`$ its linear speed. From fits of experimental data, the azimuthal angle is found to saturates at around $`45^{}`$ for very high fluid momentum. A comparison between instabilities rising in the Bödewadt boundary layer, as well as a comparison with an experiment of ripple formation in an accelerated frame, allows us to conclude that the observed patterns are not the signature of a fluid instability. The instability of the sand-water interface we observe are similar to natural ripples created in a rotating frame.

## Acknowledgements

HC is financially supported by the FRIA, Belgium. This work is also supported by the ARC contract of the University of Liège. The authors would like to thank F. Zoueshtiagh for fruitful discussions.


text:
# Reconstructing Cepheid Light Curve with Fourier Techniques I: The Fourier Expansion and Interrelations.

## 1 Introduction

The study of Cepheid light curves has two major applications: (a) distance determinations to nearby galaxies via the well calibrated period-luminosity (PL) relations (for example, see Madore & Freedman, (1985); Feast & Walker, (1987); Madore & Freedman, (1991); Saha et al., 2000c ); (b) the understanding of the pulsational behavior of Cepheids by comparing the observed light curves to the theoretical counterparts (Simon & Davis,, 1983; Buchler et al.,, 1990). Therefore, reconstructing the Cepheid light curves from the observed photometric data is important regarding these two aspects.

Because Cepheid light curves are periodic, the data points from well observed Cepheids can be described by Fourier expansion. This technique was first introduced by Schaltenbrand & Tammann in 1971, and developed by Simon & Lee, (1981) to study the structural properties of Cepheid light curves. In general, the $`n^{th}`$-order Fourier expansion has the following form:

$`m(t)=A_0+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{n}{}}}A_j\mathrm{cos}(j\omega t+\varphi _j),`$ (1)
where $`\omega =2\pi /P`$ is the frequency and $`P`$ is the period of Cepheid. The $`A_0`$ term is the mean value of the light curve; the $`A_j`$ and $`\varphi _j`$ are the Fourier amplitudes and phases for $`j^{th}`$ order, respectively. In this paper we develop the use of simulated annealing techniques to improve the quality of light curve reconstruction in nearby galaxies such as the LMC. We also apply these techniques in the light curve reconstruction of Cepheids observed by Hubble Space Telescope (HST) which is necessary for distance determinations. In particular, we use Fourier expansion, as given by equation (1) but with modifications, to reconstruct the V band light curves and Fourier interrelations to reconstruct the I band light curves. These Fourier techniques have been established in stellar pulsation studies. We also present some potential advantages and drawbacks of the application of our method to this problem.

Section 2 & 4 will describe the Fourier expansion and interrelations in details, respectively. Section 3 briefly describe the application of these Fourier techniques to HST data. The error analysis of the light curve reconstruction procedures will be presented in Section 5, following by the discussion and conclusion in Section 6. In appendix, we show another Fourier method, the Fourier intrarelations, that can be applied to reconstruct the Cepheid light curves. However, this method is less preferable than Fourier interrelations.

## 2 Fourier Expansion

The form of Fourier expansion is given by equation (1), which has been extensively used in studying the light curves of pulsating stars (see Antonello et al., (1987) and reference therein). Some applications of equation (1) in the study of the Cepheids can be found, for example, in Simon & Lee, (1981); Simon & Davis, (1983); Simon & Moffett, (1985); Antonello & Poretti, (1986); Andreasen & Petersen, (1987); Buchler & Moskalik, (1994); Poretti, (1994); Hintz & Joner, (1997). Obviously, equation (1) has $`2n+1`$ unknown parameters which require at least the same number of data points to solve for these parameters (in this paper we assume all of the periods for the Cepheids are given in the literature because they can be determined with other methods). Most of the observations on Galactic (eg., Schaltenbrand & Tammann, (1971); Simon & Lee, (1981); Moffett & Barnes, (1985); Ferro et al., (1998)) and Magellanic Clouds Cepheids (eg., Andreasen & Petersen, (1987); Moffett et al., (1998); Udalski et al., 1999a ; Udalski et al., 1999b ) include large number of epochs that permit the higher order of Fourier expansion up to $`n=8`$. In contrast, there are typically about 12 V band epochs in the HST observations of extra-galactic Cepheids (see Section 3), which permit a $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier expansion. The $`4^{th}`$ order fit is a compromise between the goodness of fit and available data: higher order fits may not result in a better fit and lower order fits may not capture the structural properties of the light curves. Since there are only 4 I band data points in HST observations (see Section 3), the $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier expansion cannot be applied.

Since the period is known from the literature, we can fold the time observation into phase as: $`\mathrm{\Phi }(t)=(tt_0)/Pint[(tt_0)/P]`$, with $`t_0`$ being a common starting epoch. The value of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is from zero to one, corresponding to a full cycle of pulsation. Hence equation (1) can be written as (Schaltenbrand & Tammann,, 1971):

$`m(t)=A_0+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{4}{}}}A_j\mathrm{cos}[2\pi j\mathrm{\Phi }(t)+\varphi _j]`$ (2)
In general, one approach to solve the unknown parameters in equation (2) is by using the linear least-square method together with the available data. However, we find that in some cases the solution does not provide a good fit to the data and produces some numerical bumps in the light curves. Figure 1 illustrates this problem. The solid curve is the resulting light curve from the least-square solution to a Cepheid in NGC 1326A. The light curve does not fit to the data well and exhibits numerical bumps around phase $`0.2`$ and $`0.5`$. These numerical bumps are not physically associated with the true light curves, but result from the sparsely sampled data points. Instead of solving for the unknown parameters, we specify the range of each parameter in equation (2) and fit the data to obtain the best-fit values for each parameter. All the parameters are fit simultaneously with the simulated annealing method (for example, see Press et al., (1992)) to minimize the corresponding $`\chi ^2`$ value: $`\chi ^2=[(m_{obs}m_{fit})/\sigma _{obs}]^2`$. The simulated annealing method will search the best fit values for a group of parameters within a reasonable amount of computational time. The dashed curve in Figure 1 shows that by fitting the parameters in equation (2) to the observed data with an appropriate choice for the ranges (given in Section 2.2 for Fourier amplitudes, $`A_j`$), the reconstructed light curve has been greatly improved. In the following subsections, we demonstrate how the choice of the ranges for Fourier parameters will affect the reconstructed light curves.

### 2.1 The Ranges of the Fourier Parameters

In order to apply the simulated annealing method to fit the available data points, certain ranges of the fitted parameters have to be imposed. The range for the mean magnitude ($`A_0`$) term in equation (2) is trivial (say, $`\pm 5mag`$ from the mean magnitude of the data points), and the range for the phases ($`\varphi _j`$) is between $`0`$ and $`2\pi `$. For the Fourier amplitudes, the following ranges are initially used to fit the Fourier expansion:

$$A_1:0.00.7;A_2:0.00.5;A_3:0.00.5;A_4:0.00.5$$

These initial ranges are selected based on the guess that some Cepheids may have large Fourier amplitudes, but Simon & Lee, (1981) show the Fourier amplitudes are generally smaller than 0.4. Therefore we pick the above ranges as a starting point. By fitting the data with the ranges given above, most of the light curves can be reconstructed fairly well with good agreement to the data points. Figure 2(a) shows an example of the reconstructed light curve for a Cepheid in the LMC with this initial choice for the ranges of Fourier amplitudes. However, these initial ranges also produce some poorly reconstructed light curves, due to the bad phased coverage of the data points, as illustrated in Figure 2(b). Comparing the two cases in Figure 2 (which have similar periods), it is clear that some of the Fourier amplitudes for poorly reconstructed light curves are relatively large, indicating that the choice of the initial ranges is inappropriate.

The quality of the reconstructed light curve can be improved by further narrowing the ranges of the Fourier amplitudes when fitting equation (2) to the data points. In order to determine the proper ranges for the Fourier amplitudes, we use the OGLE LMC data (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, Udalski et al., 1999a ) which is obtained from the OGLE home-page111http://bulge.princeton.edu/$$ogle/. There are 771 fundamental mode Cepheids in the data, based on the judgment made by OGLE team (Udalski et al., 1999a, ). The number of epochs in V and I band are $`1250`$ and $`>80`$, respectively. The large numbers of epochs are sufficient to construct the light curves for individual Cepheids by using equation (2). However, the 10 Cepheids which do not have V band data and the Cepheids which are not fundamental mode Cepheids were removed from the final sample. Because the Fourier amplitudes are independent of distance, we also include a “calibrating set” of Cepheids (Hendry et al.,, 1999), which comprise mostly of Galactic and some LMC/SMC Cepheids. In addition, most of the Cepheids observed by OGLE team have periods shorter than 10 days, with peak around $`0.5<\mathrm{log}(P)<0.7`$, and terminated at $`\mathrm{log}(P)=1.5`$. In contrast, the “calibrating set” Cepheids occupy a wider range of period, from $`\mathrm{log}(P)0.2`$ to $`\mathrm{log}(P)2.0`$. Therefore, including the “calibrating set” Cepheids can be used to determine the ranges of Fourier amplitudes beyond $`\mathrm{log}(P)=1.5`$. There are about 118 Cepheids in this sample. Since I band data for OGLE LMC has a large number of epochs, we mainly impose ranges for the Fourier amplitudes in V band.

The V Band Fourier Amplitudes: After constructing the light curves of OGLE LMC Cepheids with initial (and relatively large) Fourier amplitudes, we divided the V band light curves into two groups by visual inspection: those with well constructed light curves (as in Figure 2(a)) and those with poorly constructed light curves (as in Figure 2(b)). The distributions of the Fourier amplitudes as a function of $`\mathrm{log}(P)`$ are plotted in Figure 3. This shows the positions of Fourier amplitudes for well constructed light curves (in crosses) and poorly constructed light curves (in triangles), as a function of period. As can be seen from the figure, the distributions of the Fourier amplitudes for well constructed light curves occupy a smaller range than the poorly constructed light curves, which have relatively larger amplitudes especially for higher order harmonics. The V band light curves are further trimmed to contain only the really well constructed light curves, exemplified by Figure 2(a). We then re-plot the distributions in Figure 4, which shows evidence of well defined ranges for the V band Fourier amplitudes.

The I Band Fourier Amplitudes: Since the number of epochs for most of the OGLE LMC Cepheids in the I band is more than 80, the constructed light curve are expected to be well behaved and the Fourier amplitudes are assumed to fall within the appropriate ranges. The plots of the Fourier amplitudes are shown in Figure 5, with some suspected outliers marked in triangles and labelled. We also plot out some of the Fourier light curves for these outliers in Figure 6. As seen from the figure, some of them have acceptable light curves, with slightly larger amplitudes when compared to the Fourier light curves from Cepheids with similar periods. The exception is $`C686`$, which exhibits a tip around phase 0.1 from the original data. The simple $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier expansion cannot reproduce this tip and hence the constructed light curves do not show good agreement to the data. Nevertheless, the difference in amplitudes for the outliers and the majority of the data points are very small, because the I band amplitudes for Cepheids are generally smaller (Freedman,, 1988).

### 2.2 The Adopted Ranges for Fourier Amplitudes

From Figure 3-5, it is clear that the Fourier amplitudes occupy certain ranges in the amplitude vs. $`\mathrm{log}(P)`$ plots. Therefore we can determine the appropriate ranges of Fourier amplitudes for a given period from these figures. The adopted ranges for the Fourier amplitudes in V and I band are presented in Table 1. Due to the fact that the OGLE LMC data only contains Cepheids with periods less than 32 days ($`\mathrm{log}(P)<1.5`$), the ranges for Cepheid with $`\mathrm{log}(P)>1.5`$ are determined from the “calibrating set”, while the ranges for shorter period Cepheids are determined from both OGLE LMC and “calibrating set” data. In addition, the ranges of the Fourier amplitudes are set to be started from zero to account for possible low amplitude Cepheids. Note that the upper limit of the ranges given in Table 1 is an approximation, since there is no exact upper limit for a given period. Experience shows that sometimes a slightly larger range of the Fourier amplitudes than the one given in Table 1 can reconstruct the light curve better. An iterative process can be made, if necessary, to find the most suitable upper limits to reconstruct satisfactory light curves. The reduction in ranges can improve the quality of the Fourier fit, as some of the numerical bumps are removed in the reconstructed light curve, provided that the problem of bad phase coverage is not too severe (see details in Section 2.3).

The distributions of the Fourier amplitudes for OGLE LMC Cepheids and the “calibrating set” (or mostly Galactic) Cepheids appear to coincide, as seen in Figure 3-5. This may imply that the ranges of the Fourier amplitudes depend weakly on metallicity. However, this conclusion is only based on the analysis of two galaxies, and may not reflect the assumption that metallicity can affect the distribution of Fourier amplitudes. van Genderen, (1978) showed that the upper limits of B band amplitudes are different for Cepheids in Galaxy/M31, LMC and SMC. In addition, Paczyński & Pindor, (2000) showed that the OGLE LMC Cepheids, in the period range of $`1.1<\mathrm{log}(P)<1.4`$, have larger amplitudes than OGLE SMC Cepheids with same period ranges. Because the V band amplitudes can be scaled from B and I band amplitudes (Freedman,, 1988), the different V band upper limits for Cepheids in different galaxies could also exist. Nevertheless, the ranges of Fourier amplitudes given in Table 1 are assumed to cover the Fourier amplitudes for different metallicity environments, because these ranges go from zero to the upper limit that is slightly larger than the ranges defined by OGLE LMC and “calibrating set” Cepheids. The detailed analysis of the relationship between the Fourier amplitudes and the metallicity environments will be presented in future work.

### 2.3 Results and Problems of the Fits

Using the techniques of $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier expansion with the appropriate ranges for the Fourier amplitudes, some of the poorly reconstructed light curves can be improved and the results show good agreements to observational data. Figure 7 shows some examples of the improved reconstructed light curves when fitting equation (2) to the OGLE LMC V band data by narrowing the Fourier amplitudes as given in Table 1. As can be seen from the figure, some of the obvious bumps (or dips) in the original reconstructed light curves can be removed with this simple technique, resulting in smoother light curves and better fits to the data. The estimation of the mean magnitudes would be closer to the true mean without the influence of the numerical bumps/dips.

In certain extreme cases that either the data points are heavily clustered in certain phases or there is a large gap between two adjacent data points, the Fourier expansion fails to construct a satisfactory light curve, regardless of the choice of the ranges for Fourier amplitudes. Figure 8 shows some examples of this case. By using either the initial ranges (dotted curves) or the narrower ranges (solid curves) to fit the Fourier amplitudes with observed data points, the reconstructed light curves are still not satisfactory due to the phase clustering of the original data. When using this technique to estimate means for the PL relations, these Cepheids should be treated with caution or rejected. In fact, the rejection of Cepheids with bad phase coverage has been practiced in the past (for example, see Simon & Lee, (1981); Antonello & Poretti, (1986)).

## 3 Application to HST Data

Since Cepheids are primary distance indicators, and the Cepheid PL relations can be used to calibrate secondary distance indicators, such as the Tully-Fisher relation, Type Ia supernovae, fundamental plane and surface brightness fluctuations. This builds up the distance ladder and indicates the distance to more remote galaxies. Together with the measurements of the recession velocities of these more distant galaxies, the Hubble constant can be determined: this was the main goal of Hubble $`H_0`$ Key Project (Freedman et al., (2001), hereafter H0KP).

The conventional way of applying the Cepheid PL relations is by measuring the mean magnitude of the Cepheid over the pulsational cycle for a given period. In recent years, a great deal of effort has been made to discover extra-galactic Cepheids, and determine the distance, by using the HST (as in H0KP and Saha et al., (1999); Saha et al., 2001a ; Saha et al., 2001b ). In most of the HST observations, in order to optimize the phase coverage of Cepheids within the HST observational windows, the number of V band observations is chosen to be 12 (Freedman et al.,, 1994; Kennicutt et al.,, 1995). To correct for the extinction and reddening, I band observations are included (see, for example, HOKP and Kennicutt et al., (1995)). However, only 4 (or 5) I band observations are needed, because the I band amplitudes are smaller than in the V band (Freedman,, 1988; Freedman et al.,, 1994; Kennicutt et al.,, 1995). Existing techniques to estimate the mean from the sparsely sampled HST data include: (1) taking the phased weighted intensity mean (Saha & Hoessel,, 1990) in V band and using an empirical relation developed by Freedman, (1988) in I band (for example, see Silbermann et al., (1996)); (2) adopting template fitting procedures (Stetson,, 1996; Tanvir et al.,, 1999).

In the application of the methods developed in the previous sections to this problem, we use we use Fourier expansion, as given by equation (1) but with modifications, to reconstruct the V band light curves and Fourier interrelations to reconstruct the I band light curves. Some results of applying these methods to determine the Cepheid distance in nearby galaxies are presented in Section 6.4.

## 4 Fourier Interrelations

Because the I band observation of HST typically consist of 4 epochs, equation (2) cannot be applied to reconstruct the light curves. However, statistical relationships between the $`j^{th}`$ order Fourier coefficients for V and I band have been introduced by Hendry et al., (1999) and by Kanbur & Nikolaev, (2001), known as the Fourier interrelations. We explicitly derive and present them here because of their applicability in stellar pulsation studies. These allow the reconstruction of I band light curves up to $`4^{th}`$ order. There also exist correlations of the first order Fourier amplitude ($`A_1`$) to subsequent higher order Fourier amplitudes in the same bands (for example, see Antonello et al., (1987)), known as the Fourier intrarelations (presented in Appendix), this approach is less preferable than Fourier interrelations. The Fourier interrelations are the linear relation of $`j^{th}`$ order Fourier amplitude and phases from V band to I band, and have the following form:

$`A_j(I)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha _j+\beta _jA_j(V),j=1,\mathrm{}4`$ (3)
$`\varphi _j(I)`$ $`=`$ $`\gamma _j+\eta _j\varphi _j(V),j=1,\mathrm{}4`$ (4)
The coefficients of the interrelations are determined from the “calibrating set”, by minimizing the $`\chi ^2`$ value of the fit. Fourier interrelations for fundamental mode Cepheids are presented in Table 2. The table also shows the rms of the straight-line fit to the data. The fits were derived taking full account of errors in both variables with the standard model fitting procedures (for example, see Press et al., (1992) Chapter 15). The Fourier interrelations for equation (3) & (4) are clearly shown in Figure 9 & 10, respectively. The standard errors of the Fourier coefficients, derived from inverting the Hessian matrix, are also shown in the figures. Despite the appearance of strong correlations in the figures, the relations have large $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom, i.e. very small statistical significance. Nevertheless, using interrelation to recover sparsely sampled light curves works quite well, as shown in Section 6. For the Galactic data in the “calibrating set”, we display bump and non-bump Cepheids with solid and open squares respectively (due to the $`P_2/P_0=0.5`$ resonance around 10 days on Hertzsprung progression, the periods of bump Cepheids normally lie in between 8 and 14 days.). For the LMC/SMC data, we do not differentiate between bump and non-bump Cepheids.

Besides the Fourier interrelations among the “calibrating set” Cepheids, similar linear relations also exist for OGLE LMC and SMC Cepheids. The Cepheid data of OGLE LMC are as in Section 2, and the data of OGLE SMC (Udalski et al., 1999b, ) are downloaded from OGLE home-page. The number of the fundamental mode Cepheids, as judged by Udalski et al., 1999b , observed in SMC is $`1300`$, with most of them in short period ranges. Table 3 presents the best-fit results of Fourier interrelations to the OGLE LMC data, and the plots of the Fourier interrelations are given in Figure 11 & 12 for Fourier amplitudes and phases, respectively. The preliminary results of the OGLE SMC Fourier interrelations are presented in Table 4, with the plots of Fourier amplitudes and phases in Figure 13 & 14, respectively. Again a clear linear relation exists with increasing scatter as we go to higher order parameters. There is little difference in the slopes of the best fit lines to that found for “calibrating set” Cepheids. Hence, the Fourier interrelations given in Table 2 will be applied to reconstruct the I band light curves.

The procedures for reconstructing the I band light curves are similar to V band light curves. Instead of fitting all the parameters (the mean magnitude and the Fourier parameters), we use the Fourier interrelations to obtain the I band Fourier parameters from the V band fit. This gives the shapes of the I band light curves, and the mean I band magnitudes are found by using the observed I band data to minimize the corresponding $`\chi ^2`$ values.

There is little difference between the Fourier interrelations for Cepheids in “calibrating set” and in OGLE LMC or SMC, as shown in Table 2, 3 & 4, respectively. The good agreement between them indicates that the relative changes in Fourier parameters are almost unaffected by metallicity. This does not mean, however, that the light curve shape is independent of metallicity. Rather, it means that change in metallicity affects the Fourier parameters in different bands in the same way. Therefore, given a well-sampled light curve in V band, one can estimate Fourier parameters in I band reasonably well regardless of the metallicity of the parent galaxy. This result is useful in reconstructing the light curves of extra-galactic Cepheids in a broad range of metallicity environments.

The empirical relation that the earlier papers of H0KP used to obtain the I band mean magnitude is based on the observational results of Freedman, (1988), as the amplitude ratio of I and V band is about 0.5. However, Tanvir, (1997) recommended use of an amplitude ratio of 0.6, because this ratio can improve the estimation of I band mean magnitude. We note that the slopes in the Fourier interrelations ($`\beta `$ term in Table 2 & 3) are approximately equal to 0.6, which is close to the Tanvir’s value. This is the main reason why Fourier interrelation exists and work well in reconstructing the light curves (Section 6).

## 5 Error Analysis for Light Curve Reconstruction

The Fourier techniques described in this paper are now applied to reconstruct the Cepheid light curves in nearby galaxies observed by HST, particularly for H0KP galaxies. Perhaps the most important question regarding the application of our work to this problem is the following: does a fourth order fit with 9 free parameters to 12 V band data points represent anything physically? In order to estimate the errors associated with the light curve reconstruction procedures presented in Section 2 & 4, we performed an error analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulations.

Due to the large number of Cepheids, as well as the large number of observations in V and I bands, the simulations are performed primarily with OGLE LMC Cepheids that have good light curves (as in Figure 2(a)) and represented by crosses in Figure 3. These OGLE LMC Cepheid light curves, constructed by using all the available data points in both bands, are referred as the original light curves. We assume that when we fit a $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier expansion to these data, the resulting Fourier amplitudes are very close to their true values.

In order to mimic the published HST photometric data, we performed three simulations for the error analysis. The procedures for each simulation are as follows:

* Simulation 1: First a Cepheid is picked randomly (with replacement) from the data set, then 12 points in the V band and 4 points in the I band were randomly selected without replacement. In addition to the OGLE LMC photometric errors, we add Gaussian noise of $`\mu _{noise}=0.05mag`$ and $`\sigma _{noise}=0.10mag`$ to these randomly selected data.
* Simulation 2: Same as in Simulation 1, but with larger Gaussian noise of $`\mu _{noise}=0.15mag`$ and keep $`\sigma _{noise}=0.10mag`$.
* Simulation 3: We pick one Cepheid with large number of epochs ($`N_v=34,N_I=188`$), then 12 points in the V band and 4 points in the I band were randomly selected without replacement form this Cepheid. The additional Gaussian noise is same as in Simulation 1.

Then the data from each simulation are used to reconstruct the light curves with the procedures described in Section 2 & 4, i.e. $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier fit in the V band and interrelations in I band. The randomly selected 12 V points could of course be uniformly distributed or concentrated around one particular phase point. Mean magnitudes and the Fourier amplitudes obtained from our reconstruction procedures for these simulated data are then compared to the mean magnitudes and Fourier amplitudes from the original light curves. This is repeated a large number of times to build up an error distribution.

We emphasize that we are simulating the photometric data published in the literature. It has been suggested by an anonymous referee that even this is not a real simulation of HST Cepheid data since we neglect the possibility of events such as ”warm pixels” or cosmic rays. However we contend that such data points will either be rejected by the photometric reduction package used and, if not, the point sources responsible for these should not be used anyway.

After running $`N=1000`$ trials in each simulations, the error histograms for the mean magnitudes, as well as the Fourier amplitudes, in both V and I bands are constructed. Gaussian distributions with parameters of $`\mu `$ and $`\sigma `$ are then fitted to these error histograms, where $`\mu `$ represent the mean offsets between the simulated data and original data, and $`\sigma `$ represent the errors in either the means or the Fourier amplitudes. The results of the Gaussian fits from each simulations for V and I bands are presented in Table 5 & 6, respectively. The error histograms for the mean values, resulted from Simulation 1, are presented in Figure 15, with abscissa to be the difference between the simulated means and original means. Similarly, the errors histogram for Fourier amplitudes in V and I bands are presented in Figure 16 & 17, respectively. The parameters from Gaussian fits are listed in the upper-left corners of these figures. We did not include the error histograms for Simulation 2 & 3 in this paper, because they all look similar to the error histograms of Simulation 1 (Figure 15, 16 & 17).

To check the simulations, we also plot the V band $`R_{21}`$(=$`A_2/A_1`$) parameters (Simon & Lee,, 1981), resulting from Simulation 1, as function of $`\mathrm{log}(P)`$ in Figure 18. The filled circles are the original data and the crosses are the simulated data. Those crosses with triangles are the simulated data when either $`A_1`$ or $`A_2`$ is about $`2.0\sigma `$ away from the original values. It can be seen from the figure that the simulated data do indeed trace the original data. In addition, the $`P_2/P_0=0.5`$ resonance around 10 days can be clearly seen from this figure.

From Table 5 & 6, it can be seen that the errors of the means and each Fourier amplitudes are consistent in all three simulations. As expected, Simulation 2 gave the largest errors because the Gaussian noise generated in this simulation is bigger that other two simulations. Simulation 3 has the smallest errors, because this simulation is performed for one star. The errors for Simulation 1 is in between these two cases, which is typical. In addition, Table 5 & 6 shows that the mean offsets of the simulated data and original data are very small. This can be seen in Figure 15-17, as all histograms are almost centered at zero. Therefore, no bias introduced by the reconstruction procedure, because all four Fourier amplitudes are tightly clustered around the ”true” values given by the original well sampled Cepheid.

The simulations suggests that with typical HST Cepheid data, it is meaningful to fit a fourth order Fourier expansion and that our direct Fourier fitting procedures for estimating $`V`$ and $`I`$ band means are not biased.

## 6 Discussion and Conclusion

The light curve of a Cepheid can be reconstructed with the Fourier techniques described in this paper. For OGLE LMC Cepheid data, we have demonstrated that we can frequently improve the quality of the reconstructed light curve by restricting the range of Fourier amplitudes can take in the Fourier fit. These ranges are obtained from well sampled Cepheid light curves in the Galaxy and Magellanic Clouds.

We have then applied these techniques to HST Cepheid data. Such data typically consist of 12 and 4 V and I band points respectively. In particular, Cepheids with sufficient observations permit a $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier expansion. However, the Cepheids in HST I band observations that have insufficient data points require the application of Fourier interrelations to reconstruct the I band light curves from the V band. In summary, the Fourier techniques for light curve reconstruction procedures, as applied to the HST data, include two main parts:

* $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier expansion to 12 V band data points. This is reconstructing the light curves by a direct fit to the data points, with appropriate ranges for each of the Fourier parameters.
* Fourier interrelation to 4 I band data points. This is using the linear relations of Fourier parameters between V and I bands to reconstruct the light curves.

In general, these relatively simple techniques can reconstruct the Cepheid light curves quite well, given that the data points are relatively uniform and well sampled. These techniques serve as an alternative method to obtain the mean magnitude of Cepheids besides phase weighted intensity mean and template fitting procedures. However, the detailed comparisons between these methods are beyond the scope of this paper. Some examples of the reconstructed light curves for extra-galactic Cepheids (observed by H0KP) with these Fourier techniques are presented in Figure 19, which show good agreements to the observed data points.

We also performed Monte-Carlo simulations to determine the errors associated with our light curves reconstruction procedures. The errors of the mean magnitudes and Fourier amplitudes are determined from the fits of Gaussian distribution to the error histograms. These Gaussian fits show that our procedure is unbiased. The errors are:

* V band: $`\sigma _{mean}=0.034`$; $`\sigma _{A1}=0.039`$; $`\sigma _{A2}=0.033`$; $`\sigma _{A3}=0.028`$ and $`\sigma _{A4}=0.023`$.
* I band: $`\sigma _{mean}=0.035`$; $`\sigma _{A1}=0.025`$; $`\sigma _{A2}=0.021`$; $`\sigma _{A3}=0.017`$ and $`\sigma _{A4}=0.014`$.

Could it be the case that the distribution of 12 points is so severe that a decent fit to the V band data is not possible? Certainly and it could be that in this case a template type technique will produce a V and I band mean. However, we again contend that in this case, it will probably be the case that this point source is not used in the final analysis.

### 6.1 The Correlations of Fourier Amplitudes

It has been suggested by anonymous referee that the higher order Fourier amplitudes shown in Figure 3 & 5 are correlated with the first order Fourier amplitude ($`A_1`$) in the same bands (the Fourier intrarelations). These have been examined, for example, by (Antonello et al.,, 1987) and in the appendix. However, the Fourier intrarelations are less preferable than Fourier interrelations for reconstructing the Cepheid light curves. The reasons are discussed in following examples and in Appendix.

Here, we reexamine the results of Antonello et al., (1987) with our data sets and compare them to the Fourier interrelations. We used all “calibrating set” Cepheids and pick only the “good” OGLE LMC Cepheids (crosses) from Figure 3. Then we re-plot the $`A_1A_2`$ Fourier intrarelations and the $`A_1(V)A_1(I)`$ Fourier interrelation in Figure 20. The “Calibrating set” Cepheids and OGLE LMC Cepheids are in left and right panels, respectively. In the figure, we distinguished Cepheids with different period ranges: crosses are for Cepheids with periods shorter than 8 days (short-period Cepheid); triangles are for Cepheids with period in between 8 to 14 days (bump Cepheid); and filled circles are for Cepheids with periods longer than 14 days (long-period Cepheid). Error bars for each data point are omitted in the figure for clarity. The top two panels in Figure 20 are Fourier intrarelations in V and I band respectively, and the bottom panel is the Fourier interrelations of $`A_1(V)`$ and $`A_1(I)`$.

It is clear from the figure that the scatter of $`A_1A_2`$ intrarelations are larger than the scatter of $`A_1(V)A_1(I)`$ interrelations. Furthermore, the short-period, bump and long-period Cepheids populate different regions in the plots of intrarelations, as is also seen in Antonello et al., (1987). In contrast, The tightness of correlations in the Fourier interrelations is clear, and less dependent on period distribution. These two properties make Fourier interrelations more applicable in reconstructing the light curves than Fourier intrarelations.

### 6.2 Reconstructing Light Curves for Short Period Cepheids

The relatively large ranges of the Fourier amplitudes for Cepheids with periods less than 10 days (or $`\mathrm{log}(P)<1.0`$) is one reason for using the Fourier techniques to reconstruct the Cepheid light curves. From Figure 3 to 5, it can be seen that the distribution of the Fourier amplitudes at periods longer than 10 days (or $`\mathrm{log}(P)>1.0`$) show certain trends, which can be used to construct templates light curves as a function of period. However, the Fourier amplitudes for Cepheids with period less than 10 days do not show any obvious trends but scatter around certain ranges (as given in Table 1). For example, at a given short period, $`A_1(V)`$ may occupy the range from $`0.1`$ to $`0.4`$. Therefore, extra care has to be taken when applying template fitting to the Cepheids with periods less than 10 days. In fact, at periods shorter than $`\mathrm{log}(P)<0.85`$ the template techniques do not apply (Stetson,, 1996) but the Fourier techniques still holds good.

Although the extra-galactic Cepheids discovered in the past HST observations generally have period longer than 10 days, some short period period Cepheids have been discovered in Local Group galaxies IC 1613 (Dolphin et al.,, 2001) & Leo A (Dolphin et al.,, 2002) with HST and ground based observations, respectively. Hence for observing Cepheids at short period, the Fourier techniques are still useful to reconstruct the light curves. With the new installation of ACS (Advanced Camera for Survey) in HST, the discovery of more short period Cepheids in other galaxies is probable.

### 6.3 The Effect of Metallicity

One motivation for studying direct Fourier techniques to reconstruct Cepheid light curves is to deal with the possible metallicity dependence in Cepheids. Antonello et al., (2000) shown that the metallicity may affect the shapes of light curves close to 10 days, based on the comparison of Cepheid light curves in two galaxies. The appropriate ranges of the Fourier parameters (as given in Table 1) are assumed to cover the possible ranges due to the different metallicity environments. In addition, the Fourier interrelations are shown to be only weakly dependent on the metallicity though this does not mean that the actual light curve shape is independent of metallicity.

The template light curves defined by Stetson, (1996) are obtained from the Galaxy ($`Z=0.020`$), LMC ($`Z=0.008`$) and SMC ($`Z=0.004`$), with sample of $`3045`$ Cepheids in each galaxies. Stetson, (1996) looked for and failed to find differences between the Galactic, LMC and SMC Cepheids in terms of their amplitude and light curve shape sufficient to change the estimation of mean magnitudes. However, much more data is available now. Paczyński & Pindor, (2000) found statistically significant different amplitudes between the Galactic/LMC/SMC Cepheids in the period range $`1.1<\mathrm{log}(P)<1.4`$, in the sense that higher metallicity Cepheids have higher amplitudes. Moreover, in the period range $`0.0<\mathrm{log}(P)<0.95`$, the amplitudes ratio of $`R_{21}`$ and $`R_{31}`$ for Cepheids in LMC (Andreasen & Petersen,, 1987) and SMC (Andreasen,, 1988) are found to be larger than the Galactic Cepheids. This may due to the different metallicity environments, at least for the case of the SMC (Buchler & Moskalik,, 1994). Further some established workers in the field have found varying PC relations between the Galaxy, LMC and SMC and subsequently different PL relations (Tammann et al.,, 2001; Tammann & Reindl,, 2002). Thus while it may be that template methods yield a sufficiently accurate mean in varying metallicity environments, we contend that the issue of light curve shape and metallicity needs to be revisited in the light of the data now currently available.

### 6.4 Applications in Determining the Cepheid Distances

An immediate application of these Fourier techniques is to reconstruct the Cepheid light curves in NGC 4258 and derive its distance modulus. NGC 4258 is a spiral galaxy that has an accurate geometrical distance of $`7.2\pm 0.3Mpc`$ (corresponding to distance modulus of $`29.28\pm 0.09`$) from water maser measurement (Herrnstein et al.,, 1999). By using the published data of 15 Cepheids discovered from HST observations (Newman et al.,, 2001) and following the H0KP procedures (including using the same PL relations and reddening correction), we derived a distance modulus of $`29.38\pm 0.06`$ (random errors only) to NGC 4258, which is about $`1.1\sigma `$ away from water maser distance. If we apply the $`0.07mag`$ correction due to the WFPC2 calibration of “long vs short” exposures (this is caused by the charge-transfer efficiency of WFPC2, see H0KP and reference therein for details), then the final distance modulus becomes $`29.31\pm 0.06`$, which is consistent with the water maser distance. In addition, Kanbur et al., (2002) have also derived the Cepheid distance to NGC 4258 with the same techniques presented here but slightly different PL relations, the result of $`29.36\pm 0.06`$ (random errors only) is also consistent to the water maser distance and the distance derived in this paper.

When we apply these techniques to determine Cepheid distances to 16 galaxies using published photometry by the H0KP, our distance moduli, on average, are very similar to H0KP results, with a difference of $`0.01mag`$ (Kanbur et al.,, 2002). On the other hands, application of these techniques to 3 Sandage-Tammann-Saha galaxies (NGC 3627: Saha et al., (1999); NGC 3982: Saha et al., 2001a ; NGC 4527: Saha et al., 2001b ) yields shorter distance moduli of $`0.07mags`$ on average (Kanbur et al.,, 2002). The good agreements between the results in Kanbur et al., (2002) and in both H0KP and Sandage-Tammann-Saha galaxies suggest that our method is not too far of base.

This work has been supported by HST Grant AR08752.01-A. Part of SN work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract W7405-Eng-48. We thank an anonymous referee for many helpful suggestions for making the paper more relevant.

## Appendix A The Fourier Intrarelations

The technique of Fourier interrelations, as described in Section 4, are the linear relations between the Fourier parameters in equation (1) in different wave bands. Similarly, there exist another group of linear relations between the Fourier parameters in the same wave band, known as the Fourier intrarelations. The reason for developing the Fourier intrarelations is same as in Fourier interrelation, mainly to reconstruct the I band light curves that only contain 4 epochs. Therefore, the Fourier intrarelations are the linear relation between the $`1^{st}`$ order Fourier parameter and the higher order Fourier parameters in one particular wave band, since 4 data points only permit the $`1^{st}`$ order Fourier expansion. The Fourier intrarelations have the following expression for either V or I bands:

$`A_j`$ $`=`$ $`a_j+b_jA_1,j=2,\mathrm{}4`$ (A1)
$`\varphi _j`$ $`=`$ $`c_j+d_j\varphi _1,j=2,\mathrm{}4`$ (A2)
As in the case of Fourier interrelations, the coefficients are determined from the “calibration set” Cepheids. The results of the fits to the data with equation (A1) & (A2) are presented in Table 7, which only listed out the $`3^{rd}`$ and $`4^{th}`$ order Fourier intrarelations. The $`2^{nd}`$ order Fourier intrarelations were omitted because for sparse, 12 epoch V band data, we can fit the data with $`2^{nd}`$ order Fourier expansion and expand to $`4^{th}`$ order with Fourier intrarelations to reconstruct V band light curves. Then we can use the Fourier interrelations to reconstruct the I band light curves from the V band light curves.

The plots for the Fourier intrarelations in “calibrating set” Cepheids are presented in Figure 21 & 22 for Fourier amplitudes and phases, respectively. From these figures, though a relation clearly exists, it may not be linear though we show the best fit linear relation. In the plots of $`A_3`$ against $`A_1`$ for both V and I band, there are some stars which lie well below the best fit linear relation. The $`A_4`$ verses $`A_1`$ plots also show some evidence of a non-linearity. Since the error bars have been plotted on these diagrams, the trends described here are real. This non-linearity may due to differences in long and short period Cepheids.

As in the case of Fourier interrelations, the Fourier intrarelations in OGLE LMC Cepheids have also been found, and presented in Table 8. The corresponding plots of the Fourier amplitudes and phases are given in Figure 23 & 24, respectively. The possible non-linearity of the Fourier intrarelations that seem on the “calibrating set” Cepheids also show up in these figures, as some stars which lie below the best fit linear regression ($`A_3`$ vs. $`A_1`$) and the indications of non-linearity in the $`A_4`$ vs. $`A_1`$ plots. Furthermore, by comparing the Fourier intrarelations in the “calibrating set” and OGLE LMC Cepheids, we see clearly that the slope of the best fit line increases from the “calibrating set” Cepheids to the LMC Cepheids. The difference in slope between “calibrating set” and LMC Cepheids found in the intrarelations plots is real and is probably attributable to the metallicity differences.

Due to the possible of non-linearity and metallicity dependence on the parent galaxy, the Fourier intrarelations are less preferable than the Fourier interrelations (Section 4) for reconstructing the I band light curves with only few data points available.