Ideal bandpasses for type Ia supernova cosmology
To use type Ia supernovae as standard candles for cosmologywe need accurate broadband magnitudes. In practice the observed magnitudemay differ from the ideal magnitude-redshift relationship either throughintrinsic inhomogeneities in the type Ia supernova population or throughobservational error. Here we investigate how we can choose filterbandpasses to reduce the error caused by both these effects. We find thatbandpasses with large integral fluxes and sloping wings are best able tominimise several sources of observational error, and are also leastsensitive to intrinsic differences in type Ia supernovae. The mostimportant feature of a complete filter set for type Ia supernovacosmology is that each bandpass be a redshifted copy of the first. Wedesign practical sets of redshifted bandpasses that are matched totypical high resistivity CCD and HgCdTe infra-red detector sensitivities.These are designed to minimise systematic error in well observedsupernovae, final designs for specific missions should also considersignal-to-noise requirements and observing strategy. In addition wecalculate how accurately filters need to be calibrated in order toachieve the required photometric accuracy of future supernova cosmologyexperiments such as the SuperNova-Acceleration-Probe (SNAP), which is onepossible realisation of the Joint Dark-Energy mission (JDEM). We considerthe effect of possible periodic miscalibrations that may arise from theconstruction of an interference filter.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Director. Office of Science. Office of AdvancedScientific Computing Research. Office of High Energy Physics; AustrailianResearch Council Grants LX0454445 and DP0209028 and DP0559024
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 901814
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-59054; PASPAU; R&D Project: PD1260; BnR: KA1301030; TRN: US0702668
- Journal Information:
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of thePacific, Vol. 118, Issue 840; Related Information: Journal Publication Date: 02/2006; ISSN 0004-6280
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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