Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: The Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud   We present the I-band luminosity function of the red giant branch stars in
the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using the data from the Magellanic Clouds
Photometric Survey (Zaritsky, Harris & Thompson, 1997). Selecting stars in
uncrowded, low-extinction regions, a discontinuity in the luminosity function
is observed at I_0 = 14.54 mag. Identifying this feature with the tip of the
red giant branch (TRGB), and adopting an absolute TRGB magnitude of -4.05 +-
0.04 mag based on the calibration of Lee, Freedman & Madore (1993), we obtain a
distance modulus of 18.59 +- 0.09 (random) +- 0.16 (systematic) mag. If the
theoretical TRGB calibration provided by Cassisi & Salaris (1997) is adopted
instead, the derived distance would be 4% greater. The LMC distance modulus
reported here, 18.59 +- 0.09, is larger by 0.09 mag (1-sigma) than the value
that is most commonly used in the extragalactic distance scale calibrated by
the period-luminosity relation of the Cepheid variable stars. Our TRGB distance
modulus agrees with several RR Lyrae distances to the LMC based on HIPPARCOS
parallaxes. Finally, we note that using the same MCPS data, we obtain a
distance modulus of 18.29 +- 0.03 mag using the red clump method, which is
shorter by 0.3 mag compared to the TRGB estimate.

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The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
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The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
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The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
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The categories of this paper are: solv-int
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The categories of this paper are: q-bio
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The categories of this paper are: ao-sci
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The categories of this paper are: eess
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The categories of this paper are: gr-qc
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The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
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The categories of this paper are: hep-ex
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The categories of this paper are: adap-org
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The categories of this paper are: cond-mat
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The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn
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The categories of this paper are: cs
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The categories of this paper are: stat
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The categories of this paper are: acc-phys