Probing Systematic Bias in Low-Redshift Type Ia Supernova Measurements by Cross Analyzing Surface Brightness and Hubble Residuals

Abstract

For low-redshift (z < 0.1) Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) samples used in several cosmological analyses over the past decade, we probe for systematic bias by looking for correlations between surface brightness (SB) measurements and Hubble residuals (HR). For 292 SNe Ia, we measure SB at the location of the SN Ia from publicly available Pan-STARRS (PS1) images. The Hubble residuals are from two recent measurements with low-z SNe Ia that overlap the PS1 footprint: 1) the DES 3-year cosmology analysis, with 120 overlapping low-z SNe Ia from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics surveys and Carnegie Supernova Project, and 2) the PS1 single-telescope analysis, with 172 overlapping low-z SNe Ia from the Foundation Supernova Survey. This study is motivated by previous reports of anomalous inefficiencies and flux scatter for transients on bright galaxies. We compare HR distributions of the bright and faint halves of the SB distribution: the mean HR values differ by Delta HR = 0.031 +- 0.018, consistent with no difference at the 2 sigma level. We also perform a Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test for the bright and faint half HR distributions, and conclude that the two distributions are statistically consistent with a KS p-value of 0.07. However, if future studies with larger datasets find Delta HR ~ 0.03 with high significance, this difference would be a leading systematic uncertainty in measurements of the dark energy equation of state, w.

References in corpus (34)

• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• Cosmological parameters from CMB and other data: a Monte-Carlo approach
• The Complete Light-curve Sample of Spectroscopically Confirmed Type Ia Supernovae from Pan-STARRS1 and Cosmological Constraints from The Combined Pantheon Sample
• The Supernova Legacy Survey: Measurement of Omega_M, Omega_Lambda and w from the First Year Data Set
• Improved cosmological constraints from a joint analysis of the SDSS-II and SNLS supernova samples
• The Dark Energy Camera
• Supernova Constraints and Systematic Uncertainties from the First 3 Years of the Supernova Legacy Survey
• First-year Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II (SDSS-II) Supernova Results: Hubble Diagram and Cosmological Parameters
• The Supernova Legacy Survey 3-year sample: Type Ia Supernovae photometric distances and cosmological constraints
• CfA3: 185 Type Ia Supernova Light Curves from the CfA
• The Dependence of Type Ia Supernova Luminosities on their Host Galaxies
• GALEX-SDSS-WISE Legacy Catalog (GSWLC): Star Formation Rates, Stellar Masses and Dust Attenuations of 700,000 Low-redshift Galaxies
• Photometric Calibration of the First 1.5 Years of the Pan-STARRS1 Survey
• Hubble Residuals of Nearby Type Ia Supernovae Are Correlated with Host Galaxy Masses
• The Carnegie Supernova Project: First Photometry Data Release of Low-Redshift Type Ia Supernovae
• The Effect of Host Galaxies on Type Ia Supernovae in the SDSS-II Supernova Survey
• The Carnegie Supernova Project: Second Photometry Data Release of Low-Redshift Type Ia Supernovae
• First Cosmology Results using Type Ia Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey: Constraints on Cosmological Parameters
• Correcting Type Ia Supernova Distances for Selection Biases and Contamination in Photometrically Identified Samples
• CfA4: Light Curves for 94 Type Ia Supernovae
• Evidence of Environmental Dependencies of Type Ia Supernovae from the Nearby Supernova Factory indicated by Local Hα
• The Difference Imaging Pipeline for the Transient Search in the Dark Energy Survey
• Pan-STARRS Pixel Processing: Detrending, Warping, Stacking
• The Foundation Supernova Survey: Motivation, Design, Implementation, and First Data Release
• Strong Dependence of Type Ia Supernova Standardization on the Local Specific Star Formation Rate
• Should Type Ia Supernova Distances be Corrected for their Local Environments?
• Dependence of Type Ia supernova luminosities on their local environment
• The Foundation Supernova Survey: Measuring Cosmological Parameters with Supernovae from a Single Telescope
• First Cosmology Results using Type Ia Supernova from the Dark Energy Survey: Simulations to Correct Supernova Distance Biases
• The Effect of Environment on Type Ia Supernovae in the Dark Energy Survey Three-Year Cosmological Sample
• A Search for Kilonovae in the Dark Energy Survey
• The ALHAMBRA survey: 2-D analysis of the stellar populations in massive early-type galaxies at z < 0.3

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Cosmological Results from the RAISIN Survey: Using Type Ia Supernovae in the Near Infrared as a Novel Path to Measure the Dark Energy Equation of State