The Pantheon+ Analysis: SuperCal-fragilistic Cross Calibration, Retrained SALT2 Light-curve Model, and Calibration Systematic Uncertainty

We present a recalibration of the photometric systems in the Pantheon+ sample of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) including those in the SH0ES distance-ladder measurement of H 0. We utilize the large and uniform sky coverage of the public Pan-STARRS stellar photometry catalog to cross calibrate against tertiary standards released by individual SN Ia surveys. The most significant updates over the “SuperCal” cross calibration used for the previous Pantheon and SH0ES analyses are: (1) expansion of the number of photometric systems (now 25) and filters (now 105), (2) solving for all filter offsets in all systems simultaneously to produce a calibration uncertainty covariance matrix for cosmological-model constraints, and (3) accounting for the change in the fundamental flux calibration of the Hubble Space Telescope CALSPEC standards from previous versions on the order of 1.5% over a Δλ of 4000 Å. We retrain the SALT2 model and find that our new model coupled with the new calibration of the light curves themselves causes a net distance modulus change (d μ/dz) of 0.04 mag over the redshift range 0 < z < 1. We introduce a new formalism to determine the systematic impact on cosmological inference by propagating the covariance in the fitted calibration offsets through retraining simultaneously with light-curve fitting and find a total calibration uncertainty impact of σ w = 0.013; roughly half the size of the sample statistical uncertainty. Similarly, we find the systematic SN calibration contribution to the SH0ES H 0 uncertainty is less than 0.2 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹, suggesting that SN Ia calibration cannot resolve the current level of the “Hubble Tension.”

Duke Scholars

Author Daniel M. Scolnic Physics