Paper detail

Cepheids under the magnifying glass -- not so simple, after all!

Classical Cepheids are blue loop stars that have famously been dubbed "magnifying glasses of stellar evolution" and have been studied for a long time. As more and more precise observations of Cepheids are secured over ever-increasing temporal baselines, our ignorance of the physics governing these crucial stars is becoming increasingly clear. Thus, it is time to turn up the magnification and investigate the limitations of our understanding of classical pulsators. Of course, classical Cepheids are also standard candles thanks to the Leavitt law that allows to measure distances in the nearby Universe. Nowadays, Cepheids serve as the backbone of a precisely calibrated distance ladder that allows to measure Hubble's constant (H0) to better than 2%, thus providing crucial constraints for precision cosmology. The recently established discord among H0 values measured in the late-time Universe and inferred from observations of the early Universe requires utmost diligence in estimating systematic uncertainties in order to strengthen the significance of the results. In this presentation I focus on two main aspects of recent Cepheid-related research. First, I present the Geneva Cepheid Radial Velocity survey (GE-CeRVS) and an update on the modulated spectroscopic variability exhibited by the 4 d Cepheid QZ Normae based on 8 years of monitoring. Then, I discuss some efforts directed towards a 1% H0 measurement needed for understanding the cosmological implications of discordant H0 values. Finally, I argue that now is a particularly opportune time to leverage the synergies between stellar physics and observational cosmology.