CCD Photometry of the Globular Cluster Omega Centauri. I. Metallicity of RR Lyrae Stars from Caby Photometry

We present new measurements of the metallicity of 131 RR Lyrae stars in the globular cluster Omega Centauri, using the hk index of the Caby photometric system. The hk method has distinct advantages over Delta-S and other techniques in determining the metallicity of RR Lyrae stars, and has allowed us to obtain the most complete and homogeneous metallicity data to date for the RR Lyrae stars in this cluster. For RR Lyrae stars in common with the Delta-S observations of Butler et al. (1978) and Gratton et al. (1986), we have found that our metallicities, [Fe/H](hk), deviate systematically from their Delta-S metallicity, while our [Fe/H](hk) for well observed field RRab stars are consistent with previous spectroscopic measurements. We conclude that this is due to the larger errors associated with the previous Delta-S observations for this cluster. The Mv(RR) - [Fe/H] and period-shift - [Fe/H] relations obtained from our new data are consistent with the evolutionary models predicted by Lee (1991), confirming that the luminosity of RR Lyrae stars depends on evolutionary status as well as metallicity. Using the period - amplitude diagram, we have also identified highly evolved RRab stars in the range of -1.9 < [Fe/H] < -1.5, as predicted from the synthetic horizontal-branch models.