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Stella Seitz

Publications and source records attributed to Stella Seitz.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Accurate photometric redshift probability density estimation - method comparison and application

We introduce an ordinal classification algorithm for photometric redshift estimation, which significantly improves the reconstruction of photometric redshift probability density functions (PDFs) for individual galaxies and galaxy samples. As a use case we apply our method to CFHTLS galaxies. The ordinal classification algorithm treats distinct redshift bins as ordered values, which improves the quality of photometric redshift PDFs, compared with non-ordinal classification architectures. We also propose a new single value point estimate of the galaxy redshift, that can be used to estimate the full redshift PDF of a galaxy sample. This method is competitive in terms of accuracy with contemporary algorithms, which stack the full redshift PDFs of all galaxies in the sample, but requires orders of magnitudes less storage space. The methods described in this paper greatly improve the log-likelihood of individual object redshift PDFs, when compared with a popular Neural Network code (ANNz). In our use case, this improvement reaches 50\% for high redshift objects ($z \geq 0.75$). We show that using these more accurate photometric redshift PDFs will lead to a reduction in the systematic biases by up to a factor of four, when compared with less accurate PDFs obtained from commonly used methods. The cosmological analyses we examine and find improvement upon are the following: gravitational lensing cluster mass estimates, modelling of angular correlation functions, and modelling of cosmic shear correlation functions.

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Characterization and correction of charge-induced pixel shifts in DECam

Interaction of charges in CCDs with the already accumulated charge distribution causes both a flux dependence of the point-spread function (an increase of observed size with flux, also known as the brighter/fatter effect) and pixel-to-pixel correlations of the Poissonian noise in flat fields. We describe these effects in the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) with charge dependent shifts of effective pixel borders, i.e. the Antilogus et al. (2014) model, which we fit to measurements of flat-field Poissonian noise correlations. The latter fall off approximately as a power-law r^-2.5 with pixel separation r, are isotropic except for an asymmetry in the direct neighbors along rows and columns, are stable in time, and are weakly dependent on wavelength. They show variations from chip to chip at the 20% level that correlate with the silicon resistivity. The charge shifts predicted by the model cause biased shape measurements, primarily due to their effect on bright stars, at levels exceeding weak lensing science requirements. We measure the flux dependence of star images and show that the effect can be mitigated by applying the reverse charge shifts at the pixel level during image processing. Differences in stellar size, however, remain significant due to residuals at larger distance from the centroid.

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CLASH-X: A Comparison of Lensing and X-ray Techniques for Measuring the Mass Profiles of Galaxy Clusters

We present profiles of temperature (Tx), gas mass, and hydrostatic mass estimated from new and archival X-ray observations of CLASH clusters. We compare measurements derived from XMM and Chandra observations with one another and compare both to gravitational lensing mass profiles derived with CLASH HST and ground-based lensing data. Radial profiles of Chandra and XMM electron density and enclosed gas mass are nearly identical, indicating that differences in hydrostatic masses inferred from X-ray observations arise from differences in Tx measurements. Encouragingly, cluster Txs are consistent with one another at ~100-200 kpc radii but XMM Tx systematically decline relative to Chandra Tx at larger radii. The angular dependence of the discrepancy suggests additional investigation on systematics such as the XMM point spread function correction, vignetting and off-axis responses. We present the CLASH-X mass-profile comparisons in the form of cosmology-independent and redshift-independent circular-velocity profiles. Ratios of Chandra HSE mass profiles to CLASH lensing profiles show no obvious radial dependence in the 0.3-0.8 Mpc range. However, the mean mass biases inferred from the WL and SaWLens data are different. e.g., the weighted-mean value at 0.5 Mpc is = 0.12 for the WL comparison and = -0.11 for the SaWLens comparison. The ratios of XMM HSE mass profiles to CLASH lensing profiles show a pronounced radial dependence in the 0.3-1.0 Mpc range, with a weighted mean mass bias of value rising to ~0.3 at ~1 Mpc for the WL comparison and of 0.25 for SaWLens comparison. The enclosed gas mass profiles from both Chandra and XMM rise to a value 1/8 times the total-mass profiles inferred from lensing at 0.5 Mpc and remain constant outside of that radius, suggesting that [8xMgas] profiles may be an excellent proxy for total-mass profiles at >0.5 Mpc in massive galaxy clusters.

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Data augmentation for machine learning redshifts applied to SDSS galaxies

We present analyses of data augmentation for machine learning redshift estimation. Data augmentation makes a training sample more closely resemble a test sample, if the two base samples differ, in order to improve measured statistics of the test sample. We perform two sets of analyses by selecting 800k (1.7M) SDSS DR8 (DR10) galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts. We construct a base training set by imposing an artificial r band apparent magnitude cut to select only bright galaxies and then augment this base training set by using simulations and by applying the K-correct package to artificially place training set galaxies at a higher redshift. We obtain redshift estimates for the remaining faint galaxy sample, which are not used during training. We find that data augmentation reduces the error on the recovered redshifts by 40% in both sets of analyses, when compared to the difference in error between the ideal case and the non augmented case. The outlier fraction is also reduced by at least 10% and up to 80% using data augmentation. We finally quantify how the recovered redshifts degrade as one probes to deeper magnitudes past the artificial magnitude limit of the bright training sample. We find that at all apparent magnitudes explored, the use of data augmentation with tree based methods provide a estimate of the galaxy redshift with a negligible bias, although the error on the recovered values increases as we probe to deeper magnitudes. These results have applications for surveys which have a spectroscopic training set which forms a biased sample of all photometric galaxies, for example if the spectroscopic detection magnitude limit is shallower than the photometric limit.

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Feature importance for machine learning redshifts applied to SDSS galaxies

We present an analysis of importance feature selection applied to photometric redshift estimation using the machine learning architecture Decision Trees with the ensemble learning routine Adaboost (hereafter RDF). We select a list of 85 easily measured (or derived) photometric quantities (or `features') and spectroscopic redshifts for almost two million galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10. After identifying which features have the most predictive power, we use standard artificial Neural Networks (aNN) to show that the addition of these features, in combination with the standard magnitudes and colours, improves the machine learning redshift estimate by 18% and decreases the catastrophic outlier rate by 32%. We further compare the redshift estimate using RDF with those from two different aNNs, and with photometric redshifts available from the SDSS. We find that the RDF requires orders of magnitude less computation time than the aNNs to obtain a machine learning redshift while reducing both the catastrophic outlier rate by up to 43%, and the redshift error by up to 25%. When compared to the SDSS photometric redshifts, the RDF machine learning redshifts both decreases the standard deviation of residuals scaled by 1/(1+z) by 36% from 0.066 to 0.041, and decreases the fraction of catastrophic outliers by 57% from 2.32% to 0.99%.

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Environment-based selection effects of Planck clusters

We investigate whether the large scale structure environment of galaxy clusters imprints a selection bias on Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SZ) catalogs. Such a selection effect might be caused by line of sight (LoS) structures that add to the SZ signal or contain point sources that disturb the signal extraction in the SZ survey. We use the Planck PSZ1 union catalog (Planck Collab- oration et al. 2013a) in the SDSS region as our sample of SZ selected clusters. We calculate the angular two-point correlation function (2pcf) for physically correlated, foreground and background structure in the RedMaPPer SDSS DR8 catalog with respect to each cluster. We compare our results with an optically selected comparison cluster sample and with theoretical predictions. In contrast to the hypothesis of no environment-based selection, we find a mean 2pcf for background structures of -0.049 on scales of $\lesssim 40'$, significantly non-zero at $\sim 4 σ$, which means that Planck clusters are more likely to be detected in regions of low background density. We hypothesize this effect arises either from background estimation in the SZ survey or from radio sources in the background. We estimate the defect in SZ signal caused by this effect to be negligibly small, of the order of $\sim 10^{-4}$ of the signal of a typical Planck detection. Analogously, there are no implications on X-ray mass measurements. However, the environ- mental dependence has important consequences for weak lensing follow up of Planck galaxy clusters: we predict that projection effects account for half of the mass contained within a 15' radius of Planck galaxy clusters. We did not detect a background underdensity of CMASS LRGs, which also leaves a spatially varying redshift dependence of the Planck SZ selection function as a possible cause for our findings.

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CLASH: Extreme Emission Line Galaxies and Their Implication on Selection of High-Redshift Galaxies

We utilize the CLASH (Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble) observations of 25 clusters to search for extreme emission-line galaxies (EELGs). The selections are carried out in two central bands: F105W (Y105) and F125W (J125), as the flux of the central bands could be enhanced by the presence of [O III] 4959, 5007 at redshift of about 0.93-1.14 and 1.57-1.79, respectively. The multi-band observations help to constrain the equivalent widths of emission lines. Thanks to cluster lensing, we are able to identify 52 candidates down to an intrinsic limiting magnitude of 28.5 and to a rest-frame [O III] 4959,5007 equivalent width of about 3737 angstrom. Our samples include a number of EELGs at lower luminosities that are missed in other surveys, and the extremely high equivalent width can be only found in such faint galaxies. These EELGs can mimic the dropout feature similar to that of high redshift galaxies and contaminate the color-color selection of high redshift galaxies when the S/N ratio is limited or the band coverage is incomplete. We predict that the fraction of EELGs in the future high redshift galaxy selections cannot be neglected.

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The M31 Near-Infrared Period-Luminosity Relation and its non-linearity for $δ$ Cep Variables with $0.5 \leq \log(P) \leq 1.7$

We present the largest M31 near-infrared (F110W (close to J band), F160W (H band)) Cepheid sample so far. The sample consists of 371 Cepheids with photometry obtained from the HST PHAT program. The sample of 319 fundamental mode Cepheids, 16 first overtone Cepheids and 36 type II Cepheids, was identified using the median absolute deviation (MAD) outlier rejection method we develop here. This method does not rely on priors and allows us to obtain this clean Cepheid sample without rejecting a large fraction of Cepheids. The obtained Period-Luminosity relations (PLRs) have a very small dispersion, i.e. 0.155 mag in F160W, despite using random phased observations. This remarkably small dispersion allows us to determine that the PLRs are significantly better described by a broken slope at ten days than a linear slope. The use of our sample as an anchor to determine the Hubble constant gives a $3.2\%$ larger Hubble constant compared to the Riess et al. (2012) sample.

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CLASH: Weak-Lensing Shear-and-Magnification Analysis of 20 Galaxy Clusters

We present a joint shear-and-magnification weak-lensing analysis of a sample of 16 X-ray-regular and 4 high-magnification galaxy clusters at 0.19<z<0.69 selected from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). Our analysis uses wide-field multi-color imaging, taken primarily with Suprime-Cam on the Subaru Telescope. From a stacked shear-only analysis of the X-ray-selected subsample, we detect the ensemble-averaged lensing signal with a total signal-to-noise ratio of ~25 in the radial range of 200 to 3500kpc/h. The stacked tangential-shear signal is well described by a family of standard density profiles predicted for dark-matter-dominated halos in gravitational equilibrium, namely the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW), truncated variants of NFW, and Einasto models. For the NFW model, we measure a mean concentration of $c_{200c}=4.01^{+0.35}_{-0.32}$ at $M_{200c}=1.34^{+0.10}_{-0.09} 10^{15}M_{\odot}$. We show this is in excellent agreement with Lambda cold-dark-matter (LCDM) predictions when the CLASH X-ray selection function and projection effects are taken into account. The best-fit Einasto shape parameter is $α_E=0.191^{+0.071}_{-0.068}$, which is consistent with the NFW-equivalent Einasto parameter of $\sim 0.18$. We reconstruct projected mass density profiles of all CLASH clusters from a joint likelihood analysis of shear-and-magnification data, and measure cluster masses at several characteristic radii. We also derive an ensemble-averaged total projected mass profile of the X-ray-selected subsample by stacking their individual mass profiles. The stacked total mass profile, constrained by the shear+magnification data, is shown to be consistent with our shear-based halo-model predictions including the effects of surrounding large-scale structure as a two-halo term, establishing further consistency in the context of the LCDM model.

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The 64 Mpixel wide field imager for the Wendelstein 2m Telescope: Design and Calibration

The Wendelstein Observatory of Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich has recently been upgraded with a modern 2m robotic telescope. One Nasmyth port of the telescope has been equipped with a wide-field corrector which preserves the excellent image quality (< 0.8" median seeing) of the site (Hopp et al. 2008) over a field of view of 0.7 degrees diameter. The available field is imaged by an optical imager (WWFI, the Wendelstein Wide Field Imager) built around a customized 2 $\times$ 2 mosaic of 4k $\times$ 4k 15 μm e2v CCDs from Spectral Instruments. This paper provides an overview of the design and the WWFI's performance. We summarize the system mechanics (including a structural analysis), the electronics (and its electromagnetic interference (EMI) protection) and the control software. We discuss in detail detector system parameters, i.e. gain and readout noise, quantum efficiency as well as charge transfer efficiency (CTE) and persistent charges. First on sky tests yield overall good predictability of system throughput based on lab measurements.

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A Consistent Study of Metallicity Evolution at 0.8 < z < 2.6

We present the correlations between stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR) and [NII]/Ha flux ratio as indicator of gas-phase metallicity for a sample of 222 galaxies at 0.8 < z < 2.6 and log(M*/Msun)=9.0-11.5 from the LUCI, SINS/zC-SINF and KMOS3D surveys. This sample provides a unique analysis of the mass-metallicity relation (MZR) over an extended redshift range using consistent data analysis techniques and strong-line metallicity indicator. We find a constant slope at the low-mass end of the relation and can fully describe its redshift evolution through the evolution of the characteristic turnover mass where the relation begins to flatten at the asymptotic metallicity. At fixed mass and redshift, our data do not show a correlation between the [NII]/Ha ratio and SFR, which disagrees with the 0.2-0.3dex offset in [NII]/Ha predicted by the "fundamental relation" between stellar mass, SFR and metallicity discussed in recent literature. However, the overall evolution towards lower [NII]/Ha at earlier times does broadly agree with these predictions.

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Three Gravitationally Lensed Supernovae Behind CLASH Galaxy Clusters

We report observations of three gravitationally lensed supernovae (SNe) in the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) Multi-Cycle Treasury program. These objects, SN CLO12Car (z = 1.28), SN CLN12Did (z = 0.85), and SN CLA11Tib (z = 1.14), are located behind three different clusters, MACSJ1720.2+3536 (z = 0.391), RXJ1532.9+3021 (z = 0.345), and Abell 383 (z = 0.187), respectively. Each SN was detected in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) optical and infrared images. Based on photometric classification, we find that SNe CLO12Car and CLN12Did are likely to be Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), while the classification of SN CLA11Tib is inconclusive. Using multi-color light-curve fits to determine a standardized SN Ia luminosity distance, we infer that SN CLO12Car was approximately 1.0 +/- 0.2 mag brighter than field SNe Ia at a similar redshift and ascribe this to gravitational lens magnification. Similarly, SN CLN12Did is approximately 0.2 +/- 0.2 mag brighter than field SNe Ia. We derive independent estimates of the predicted magnification from CLASH strong+weak lensing maps of the clusters: 0.83 +/- 0.16 mag for SN CLO12Car, 0.28 +/- 0.08 mag for SN CLN12Did, and 0.43 +/- 0.11 mag for SN CLA11Tib. The two SNe Ia provide a new test of the cluster lens model predictions: we find that the magnifications based on the SN Ia brightness and those predicted by the lens maps are consistent. Our results herald the promise of future observations of samples of cluster-lensed SNe Ia (from the ground or space) to help illuminate the dark-matter distribution in clusters of galaxies, through the direct determination of absolute magnifications.

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CLASH-VLT: Constraints on the Dark Matter Equation of State from Accurate Measurements of Galaxy Cluster Mass Profiles

A pressureless scenario for the Dark Matter (DM) fluid is a widely adopted hypothesis, despite the absence of a direct observational evidence. According to general relativity, the total mass-energy content of a system shapes the gravitational potential well, but different test particles perceive this potential in different ways depending on their properties. Cluster galaxy velocities, being $\ll$c, depend solely on the gravitational potential, whereas photon trajectories reflect the contributions from the gravitational potential plus a relativistic-pressure term that depends on the cluster mass. We exploit this phenomenon to constrain the Equation of State (EoS) parameter of the fluid, primarily DM, contained in galaxy clusters. We use the complementary information provided by the kinematic and lensing mass profiles of the galaxy cluster MACS 1206.2-0847 at $z=0.44$, as obtained in an extensive imaging and spectroscopic campaign within the CLASH survey. The unprecedented high quality of our data-set and the properties of this cluster are well suited to determine the EoS parameter of the cluster fluid. Since baryons contribute at most $15\%$ to the total mass in clusters and their pressure is negligible, the EoS parameter we derive describes the behavior of the DM fluid. We obtain the most stringent constraint on the DM EoS parameter to date, $w=(p_r+2\,p_t)/(3\,c^2ρ)=0.00\pm0.15\mathrm{(stat)}\pm0.08\mathrm{(syst)}$, averaged over the radial range $0.5\,\mathrm{Mpc}\leq$$r$$\leq$$r_{200}$, where $p_r$ and $p_t$ are the radial and tangential pressure, and $ρ$ is the density. We plan to further improve our constraint by applying the same procedure to all clusters from the ongoing CLASH-VLT program.

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CLASH: Complete Lensing Analysis of the Largest Cosmic Lens MACS J0717.5+3745 and Surrounding Structures

The galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 (z=0.55) is the largest known cosmic lens, with complex internal structures seen in deep X-ray, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and dynamical observations. We perform a combined weak and strong lensing analysis with wide-field BVRi'z' Subaru/Suprime-Cam observations and 16-band Hubble Space Telescope observations taken as part of the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). We find consistent weak distortion and magnification measurements of background galaxies, and combine these signals to construct an optimally estimated radial mass profile of the cluster and its surrounding large-scale structure out to 5 Mpc/h. We find consistency between strong-lensing and weak-lensing in the region where these independent data overlap, <500 kpc/h. The two-dimensional weak-lensing map reveals a clear filamentary structure traced by distinct mass halos. We model the lensing shear field with 9 halos, including the main cluster, corresponding to mass peaks detected above 2.5σ_κ. The total mass of the cluster as determined by the different methods is M_{vir}=(2.8\pm0.4) \times 10^15 M_sun. Although this is the most massive cluster known at z>0.5, in terms of extreme value statistics we conclude that the mass of MACS J0717.5+3745 by itself is not in serious tension with LambdaCDM, representing only a ~2σ departure above the maximum simulated halo mass at this redshift.

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The Contribution of Halos with Different Mass Ratios to the Overall Growth of Cluster-Sized Halos

We provide a new observational test for a key prediction of the ΛCDM cosmological model: the contributions of mergers with different halo-to-main-cluster mass ratios to cluster-sized halo growth. We perform this test by dynamically analyzing seven galaxy clusters, spanning the redshift range $0.13 < z_c < 0.45$ and caustic mass range $0.4-1.5$ $10^{15} h_{0.73}^{-1}$ M$_{\odot}$, with an average of 293 spectroscopically-confirmed bound galaxies to each cluster. The large radial coverage (a few virial radii), which covers the whole infall region, with a high number of spectroscopically identified galaxies enables this new study. For each cluster, we identify bound galaxies. Out of these galaxies, we identify infalling and accreted halos and estimate their masses and their dynamical states. Using the estimated masses, we derive the contribution of different mass ratios to cluster-sized halo growth. For mass ratios between ~0.2 and ~0.7, we find a ~1 $σ$ agreement with ΛCDM expectations based on the Millennium simulations I and II. At low mass ratios, $\lesssim 0.2$, our derived contribution is underestimated since the detection efficiency decreases at low masses, $\sim 2 \times 10^{14}$ $h_{0.73}^{-1}$ M$_{\odot}$. At large mass ratios, $\gtrsim 0.7$, we do not detect halos probably because our sample, which was chosen to be quite X-ray relaxed, is biased against large mass ratios. Therefore, at large mass ratios, the derived contribution is also underestimated.

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Galaxy halo truncation and Giant Arc Surface Brightness Reconstruction in the Cluster MACSJ1206.2-0847

In this work we analyze the mass distribution of MACSJ1206.2-0847, especially focusing on the halo properties of its cluster members. The cluster appears relaxed in its X-ray emission, but has significant amounts of intracluster light which is not centrally concentrated, suggesting that galaxy-scale interactions are still ongoing despite the overall relaxed state. The cluster lenses 12 background galaxies into multiple images and one galaxy at $z=1.033$ into a giant arc and its counterimage. The multiple image positions and the surface brightness distribution (SFB) of the arc which is bent around several cluster members are sensitive to the cluster galaxy halo properties. We model the cluster mass distribution with a NFW profile and the galaxy halos with two parameters for the mass normalization and extent of a reference halo assuming scalings with their observed NIR--light. We match the multiple image positions at an r.m.s. level of $0.85\arcsec$ and can reconstruct the SFB distribution of the arc in several filters to a remarkable accuracy based on this cluster model. The length scale where the enclosed galaxy halo mass is best constrained is about 5 effective radii -- a scale in between those accessible to dynamical and field strong lensing mass estimates on one hand and galaxy--galaxy weak lensing results on the other hand. The velocity dispersion and halo size of a galaxy with $m_{\rm 160W,AB}=19.2$ or $M_{\rm B,Vega}=-20.7$ are $σ=150 \rm kms^{-1}$ and $r\approx 26\pm 6 \rm kpc$, indicating that the halos of the cluster galaxies are tidally stripped. We also reconstruct the unlensed source (which is smaller by a factor of $\sim5.8$ in area), demonstrating the increase of morphological information due to lensing and conclude that this galaxy has likely star--forming spiral arms with a red (older) central component.

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Photometric Redshifts and Systematic Variations in the SEDs of Luminous Red Galaxies from the SDSS DR7

We describe the construction of a template set of spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for the estimation of photometric redshifts of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) with a Bayesian template fitting method. By examining the color properties of several publicly available SED sets within a redshift range of 0 0.15) of 0.12%. We show that templates that optimally describe the brightest galaxies (-24.5<M_R<-22.7) indeed vary from z=0.1 to z=0.5, consistent with aging of the stellar population. Furthermore, we find that templates that optimally describe galaxies at z<0.1 strongly differ as a function of the absolute magnitude of the galaxies, indicating an increase in star formation activity for less luminous galaxies. Our findings based on the photometry of the SDSS LRGs and our SED template fitting are supported by comparison to the average SDSS LRG spectra in different luminosity and redshift bins.

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Properties of M31. II: A Cepheid disk sample derived from the first year of PS1 PAndromeda data

We present a sample of Cepheid variable stars towards M31 based on the first year of regular M31 observations of the PS1 survey in the r_P1 and i_P1 filters. We describe the selection procedure for Cepheid variable stars from the overall variable source sample and develop an automatic classification scheme using Fourier decomposition and the location of the instability strip. We find 1440 fundamental mode (classical δ) Cep stars, 126 Cepheids in the first overtone mode, and 147 belonging to the Population II types. 296 Cepheids could not be assigned to one of these classes and 354 Cepheids were found in other surveys. These 2009 Cepheids constitute the largest Cepheid sample in M31 known so far and the full catalog is presented in this paper. We briefly describe the properties of our sample in its spatial distribution throughout the M31 galaxy, in its age properties, and we derive an apparent period-luminosity relation (PLR) in our two bands. The Population I Cepheids nicely follow the dust pattern of the M31 disk, whereas the 147 Type II Cepheids are distributed throughout the halo of M31. We outline the time evolution of the star formation in the major ring found previously and find an age gradient. A comparison of our PLR to previous results indicates a curvature term in the PLR.

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