Studying Type II supernovae as cosmological standard candles using the Dark Energy Survey

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the potential of Type II supernovae as independent cosmological distance indicators using data from the Dark Energy Survey, highlighting their utility and challenges for future cosmological measurements.

Contribution

It presents the largest Hubble diagram for SNe II, assesses their standardization, and explores biases and improvements for their use in cosmology.

Findings

Hubble diagram with 70 SNe II shows 0.27 mag dispersion

Adding color term does not reduce scatter

Simulations estimate redshift-dependent biases

Abstract

Despite vast improvements in the measurement of the cosmological parameters, the nature of dark energy and an accurate value of the Hubble constant (H$_0$) in the Hubble-Lema\^itre law remain unknown. To break the current impasse, it is necessary to develop as many independent techniques as possible, such as the use of Type II supernovae (SNe II). The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of SNe II for deriving accurate extragalactic distances, which will be an asset for the next generation of telescopes where more-distant SNe II will be discovered. More specifically, we present a sample from the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Program (DES-SN) consisting of 15 SNe II with photometric and spectroscopic information spanning a redshift range up to 0.35. Combining our DES SNe with publicly available samples, and using the standard candle method (SCM), we construct the largest available Hubble diagram with SNe II in the Hubble flow (70 SNe II) and find an observed dispersion of 0.27 mag. We demonstrate that adding a colour term to the SN II standardisation does not reduce the scatter in the Hubble diagram. Although SNe II are viable as distance indicators, this work points out important issues for improving their utility as independent extragalactic beacons: find new correlations, define a more standard subclass of SNe II, construct new SN II templates, and dedicate more observing time to high-redshift SNe II. Finally, for the first time, we perform simulations to estimate the redshift-dependent distance-modulus bias due to selection effects.