Studying Type II supernovae as cosmological standard candles using the Dark Energy Survey
Abstract
Despite vast improvements in the measurement of the cosmological parameters, the nature of dark energy and an accurate value of the Hubble constant (H) in the Hubble-Lema\^itre law remain unknown. To break the current impasse, it is necessary to develop as many independent techniques as possible, such as the use of Type II supernovae (SNe II). The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of SNe II for deriving accurate extragalactic distances, which will be an asset for the next generation of telescopes where more-distant SNe II will be discovered. More specifically, we present a sample from the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Program (DES-SN) consisting of 15 SNe II with photometric and spectroscopic information spanning a redshift range up to 0.35. Combining our DES SNe with publicly available samples, and using the standard candle method (SCM), we construct the largest available Hubble diagram with SNe II in the Hubble flow (70 SNe II) and find an observed dispersion of 0.27 mag. We demonstrate that adding a colour term to the SN II standardisation does not reduce the scatter in the Hubble diagram. Although SNe II are viable as distance indicators, this work points out important issues for improving their utility as independent extragalactic beacons: find new correlations, define a more standard subclass of SNe II, construct new SN II templates, and dedicate more observing time to high-redshift SNe II. Finally, for the first time, we perform simulations to estimate the redshift-dependent distance-modulus bias due to selection effects.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2005.09757,
title = {Studying Type II supernovae as cosmological standard candles using the Dark Energy Survey},
author = {T. de Jaeger and L. Galbany and S. González-Gaitán and R. Kessler and A. V. Filippenko and F. Förster and M. Hamuy and P. J. Brown and T. M. Davis and C. P. Gutiérrez and C. Inserra and G F. Lewis and A. Möller and D. Scolnic and M. Smith and D. Brout and D. Carollo and R. J. Foley and K. Glazebrook and S. R. Hinton and E. Macaulay and B. Nichol and M. Sako and N. E. Sommer and B. E. Tucker and T. M. C. Abbott and M. Aguena and S. Allam and J. Annis and S. Avila and E. Bertin and S. Bhargava and D. Brooks and D. L. Burke and A. Carnero Rosell and M. Carrasco Kind and J. Carretero and M. Costanzi and M. Crocce and L. N. da Costa and J. De Vicente and S. Desai and H. T. Diehl and P. Doel and A. Drlica-Wagner and T. F. Eifler and J. Estrada and S. Everett and B. Flaugher and P. Fosalba and J. Frieman and J. García-Bellido and E. Gaztanaga and D. Gruen and R. A. Gruendl and J. Gschwend and G. Gutierrez and W. G. Hartley and D. L. Hollowood and K. Honscheid and D. J. James and K. Kuehn and N. Kuropatkin and T. S. Li and M. Lima and M. A. G. Maia and F. Menanteau and R. Miquel and A. Palmese and F. Paz-Chinchón and A. A. Plazas and A. K. Romer and A. Roodman and E. Sanchez and V. Scarpine and M. Schubnell and S. Serrano and I. Sevilla-Noarbe and M. Soares-Santos and E. Suchyta and M. E. C. Swanson and G. Tarle and D. Thomas and D. L. Tucker and T. N. Varga and A. R. Walker and J. Weller and R. Wilkinson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.09757},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
39 pages, 22 figures, 10 tables, Accepted for publication in MNRAS