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Title: Distances with <4% precision from type Ia supernovae in young star-forming environments

Abstract

The luminosities of Type Ia supernovae (SN), the thermonuclear explosions of white dwarf stars, vary systematically with their intrinsic color and light-curve decline rate. These relationships have been used to calibrate their luminosities to within ~0.14–0.20 mag from broadband optical light curves, yielding individual distances accurate to ~7–10%. Here we identify a subset of SN Ia that erupt in environments having high ultraviolet surface brightness and star-formation surface density. When we apply a steep model extinction law, these SN can be calibrated to within ~0.065–0.075 mag, corresponding to ~3–4% in distance — the best yet with SN Ia by a substantial margin. The small scatter suggests that variations in only one or two progenitor properties account for their light-curve-width/color/luminosity relation.

Authors:
; ; ; ; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
OSTI Identifier:
1168987
Report Number(s):
SLAC-PUB-16202
Journal ID: ISSN 0036-8075; arXiv:1410.0961
DOE Contract Number:  
AC02-76SF00515
Resource Type:
Journal Article
Journal Name:
Science
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 347; Journal Issue: 6229; Journal ID: ISSN 0036-8075
Publisher:
AAAS
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
astrophysics; GRQC

Citation Formats

Kelly, P. L., Filippenko, A. V., Burke, D. L., Hicken, M., Ganeshalingam, M., and Zheng, W. Distances with <4% precision from type Ia supernovae in young star-forming environments. United States: N. p., 2015. Web. doi:10.1126/science.1261475.
Kelly, P. L., Filippenko, A. V., Burke, D. L., Hicken, M., Ganeshalingam, M., & Zheng, W. Distances with <4% precision from type Ia supernovae in young star-forming environments. United States. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261475
Kelly, P. L., Filippenko, A. V., Burke, D. L., Hicken, M., Ganeshalingam, M., and Zheng, W. 2015. "Distances with <4% precision from type Ia supernovae in young star-forming environments". United States. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261475. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1168987.
@article{osti_1168987,
title = {Distances with <4% precision from type Ia supernovae in young star-forming environments},
author = {Kelly, P. L. and Filippenko, A. V. and Burke, D. L. and Hicken, M. and Ganeshalingam, M. and Zheng, W.},
abstractNote = {The luminosities of Type Ia supernovae (SN), the thermonuclear explosions of white dwarf stars, vary systematically with their intrinsic color and light-curve decline rate. These relationships have been used to calibrate their luminosities to within ~0.14–0.20 mag from broadband optical light curves, yielding individual distances accurate to ~7–10%. Here we identify a subset of SN Ia that erupt in environments having high ultraviolet surface brightness and star-formation surface density. When we apply a steep model extinction law, these SN can be calibrated to within ~0.065–0.075 mag, corresponding to ~3–4% in distance — the best yet with SN Ia by a substantial margin. The small scatter suggests that variations in only one or two progenitor properties account for their light-curve-width/color/luminosity relation.},
doi = {10.1126/science.1261475},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1168987}, journal = {Science},
issn = {0036-8075},
number = 6229,
volume = 347,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Thu Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}

Journal Article:

Figures / Tables:

Table 1 Table 1: The scatter among the Hubble residuals of the highly standardizable SN Ia using RV = 1.8 and RV = 3.1. We compute the standard deviation uncertainty through bootstrap resampling, after >0.3 mag Hubble-residual outliers are removed.

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