1.8 per cent measurement of $H_0$ from Cepheids alone

One of the most pressing problems in current cosmology is the cause of the Hubble tension. We revisit a two-rung distance ladder, composed only of Cepheid periods and magnitudes, anchor distances in the Milky Way, Large Magellanic Cloud, NGC 4258, and host galaxy redshifts. We adopt the SH0ES data for the most up-to-date and carefully vetted measurements, where the Cepheid hosts were selected to harbour also Type Ia supernovae. We introduce two important improvements: a rigorous selection modelling and a state-of-the-art density and peculiar velocity model using Manticore-Local, based on the Bayesian Origin Reconstruction from Galaxies (BORG) algorithm. We infer $H_0 = 71.7 \pm 1.3\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, assuming the Cepheid host sample was selected by supernova magnitudes. However, the actual selection criteria are not clear, and other assumptions can increase $H_0$ by up to one statistical standard deviation. The posterior has a lower central value and a 45 per cent smaller uncertainty than a previous study using the same distance-ladder data. The result is also slightly lower than the supernova-based SH0ES inferred value of $H_0 = 73.2 \pm 0.9\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, and is in $3.3\sigma$ tension with the latest cosmic microwave background results in the standard cosmological model. These results demonstrate that a measurement of $H_0$ of sufficient precision to weigh in on the Hubble tension is achievable using second-rung data alone, underscoring the importance of robust and accurate statistical and velocity-field modelling.