LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD NEAR-INFRARED SYNOPTIC SURVEY. II. THE WESENHEIT RELATIONS AND THEIR APPLICATION TO THE DISTANCE SCALE

We present new near-infrared (NIR) Cepheid period-Wesenheit (P-W) relations in the LMC using time-series observations from the Large Magellanic Cloud NIR Synoptic Survey. We also derive optical+NIR P-W relations using V and I magnitudes from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment. We employ our new JHK(s) data to determine an independent distance to the LMC of mu(LMC) = 18.47 +/- 0.07(statistical) mag, using an absolute calibration of the Galactic relations based on several distance determination methods and accounting for the intrinsic scatter of each technique. We also derive new NIR period-luminosity and Wesenheit relations for Cepheids in M31 using observations from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury survey. We use the absolute calibrations of the Galactic and LMC W-J,W-H relations to determine the distance modulus of M31, mu(M31) = 24.46 +/- 0.20 mag. We apply a simultaneous fit to Cepheids in several Local Group galaxies covering a range of metallicities (7.7 < 12 + log[O/H] < 8.6 dex) to determine a global slope of -3.244 +/- 0.016 mag dex(-1) for the W-J,W-Ks relation and obtain robust distance estimates. Our distances are in good agreement with recent TRGB based distance estimates and we do not find any evidence for a metallicity dependence in the NIR P-W relations.