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Evidence for Cosmic Acceleration Is Robust to Observed Correlations between Type Ia Supernova Luminosity and Stellar Age

Publication ,  Journal Article
Rose, BM; Rubin, D; Cikota, A; Deustua, SE; Dixon, S; Fruchter, A; Jones, DO; Riess, AG; Scolnic, DM
Published in: Astrophysical Journal Letters
June 10, 2020

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are powerful standardizable candles for constraining cosmological models and provided the first evidence of the accelerated expansion of the universe. Their precision derives from empirical correlations, now measured from >1000 SNe Ia, between their luminosities, light-curve shapes, colors, and most recently with the stellar mass of their host galaxy. As mass correlates with other galaxy properties, alternative parameters have been investigated to improve SN Ia standardization though none have been shown to significantly alter the determination of cosmological parameters. We re-examine a recent claim, based on 34 SN Ia in nearby passive host galaxies, of a 0.05 mag Gyr-1 dependence of standardized SN Ia luminosity on host age, which, if extrapolated to higher redshifts, would be a bias up to 0.25 mag, challenging the inference of dark energy. We reanalyze this sample of hosts using both the original method and a Bayesian hierarchical model and find after a fuller accounting of the uncertainties the significance of a dependence on age to be ≤2σ and ∼1σ after the removal of a single poorly sampled SN Ia. To test the claim that a trend seen in old stellar populations can be applied to younger ages, we extend our analysis to a larger sample that includes young hosts. We find the residual dependence of host age (after all standardization typically employed for cosmological measurements) to be consistent with zero for 254 SNe Ia from the Pantheon sample, ruling out the large but low significance trend seen in passive hosts.

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Published In

Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI

EISSN

2041-8213

ISSN

2041-8205

Publication Date

June 10, 2020

Volume

896

Issue

1

Related Subject Headings

  • Astronomy & Astrophysics
  • 5109 Space sciences
  • 5101 Astronomical sciences
  • 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences
 

Citation

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Rose, B. M., Rubin, D., Cikota, A., Deustua, S. E., Dixon, S., Fruchter, A., … Scolnic, D. M. (2020). Evidence for Cosmic Acceleration Is Robust to Observed Correlations between Type Ia Supernova Luminosity and Stellar Age. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 896(1). https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab94ad
Rose, B. M., D. Rubin, A. Cikota, S. E. Deustua, S. Dixon, A. Fruchter, D. O. Jones, A. G. Riess, and D. M. Scolnic. “Evidence for Cosmic Acceleration Is Robust to Observed Correlations between Type Ia Supernova Luminosity and Stellar Age.” Astrophysical Journal Letters 896, no. 1 (June 10, 2020). https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab94ad.
Rose BM, Rubin D, Cikota A, Deustua SE, Dixon S, Fruchter A, et al. Evidence for Cosmic Acceleration Is Robust to Observed Correlations between Type Ia Supernova Luminosity and Stellar Age. Astrophysical Journal Letters. 2020 Jun 10;896(1).
Rose, B. M., et al. “Evidence for Cosmic Acceleration Is Robust to Observed Correlations between Type Ia Supernova Luminosity and Stellar Age.” Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 896, no. 1, June 2020. Scopus, doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ab94ad.
Rose BM, Rubin D, Cikota A, Deustua SE, Dixon S, Fruchter A, Jones DO, Riess AG, Scolnic DM. Evidence for Cosmic Acceleration Is Robust to Observed Correlations between Type Ia Supernova Luminosity and Stellar Age. Astrophysical Journal Letters. 2020 Jun 10;896(1).
Journal cover image

Published In

Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI

EISSN

2041-8213

ISSN

2041-8205

Publication Date

June 10, 2020

Volume

896

Issue

1

Related Subject Headings

  • Astronomy & Astrophysics
  • 5109 Space sciences
  • 5101 Astronomical sciences
  • 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences