Predicted Masses of Galactic Cepheids in the Gaia Data Release 2

On the basis of recently computed nonlinear convective pulsation models of Galactic Cepheids, spanning wide ranges of input stellar parameters, we derive theoretical mass-dependent Period–Wesenheit relations in the Gaia bands, namely, G, GBP, and GBR, that are found to be almost independent of the assumed efficiency of superadiabatic convection. The application to a selected subsample of the Gaia Data Release 2 Galactic Cepheids database allows us to derive mass-dependent estimates of their individual distances. By imposing their match with the astrometric values inferred from Gaia, we are able to evaluate the individual mass of each pulsator. The inferred mass distribution is peaked around 5.6M⊙ and 5.4M⊙ for the F and FO pulsators, respectively. If the estimated Gaia parallax offset $\langle {\rm{\Delta }}\varpi \rangle =0.046$ mas is applied to Gaia parallaxes before imposing their coincidence with the theoretical ones, the inferred mass distribution is found to shift toward lower masses, namely, ∼5.2M⊙ and 5.1M⊙ for the F and FO pulsators, respectively. The comparison with independent evaluations of the stellar masses, for a subset of binary Cepheids in our sample, seems to support the predictive capability of the current theoretical scenario. By forcing the coincidence of our mass determinations with these literature values we derive an independent estimate of the mean offset to be applied to Gaia DR2 parallaxes, $\langle {\rm{\Delta }}\varpi \rangle =0.053\pm 0.029$ mas, slightly higher but in agreement within the errors with the Riess et al. value.