Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2012-04-11
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
6 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to MNRAS
Scientific paper
We present an analysis of the Hubble diagram for 12 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) observed in the near-infrared J- and H-bands. We select SNe exclusively from the redshift range 0.03 < z < 0.09 to reduce uncertainties coming from peculiar velocities while remaining in a cosmologically well-understood region. Our results suggest that SNe Ia observed in the near-infrared (NIR) are the best known standard candles. We fit previously determined NIR light-curve templates to new high-precision data to derive peak magnitudes and to determine the scatter about the Hubble line. Using a standard cosmology of (H_0, Omega_m, Lambda) = (70,0.27,0.73) we find a median J-band absolute magnitude of M_J = -18.39 with a scatter of 0.116 and a median H- band absolute magnitude of M_H = -18.36 with a scatter of 0.085. The scatter in the H-band is the smallest yet measured. We search for correlations between residuals in the J- and H-band Hubble diagrams and SN properties, such as SN colour, B- band stretch and the projected distance from host-galaxy centre. The only significant correlation is between the J-band Hubble residual and the J-H pseudo-colour. We also examine how the scatter changes when fewer points in the near-infrared are used to constrain the light curve. With a single point in the H-band taken anywhere from 10 days before to 15 days after B-band maximum light and a prior on the date of H- band maximum set from the date of B-band maximum, we find that we can measure distances to an accuracy of 6%. The precision of SNe Ia in the NIR provides new opportunities for precision measurements of both the expansion history of the universe and peculiar velocities of nearby galaxies.
Arcavi Iair
Barone-Nugent R. L.
Cenko Bradley S.
Cooke Jeff
Gal-Yam Avishay
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