A measurement of the Hubble constant from Type II supernovae

TL;DR

This study uses Type II supernovae as an independent method to measure the Hubble constant, providing results consistent with the local distance ladder and highlighting a persistent tension with Planck satellite measurements.

Contribution

It introduces SNe II as a new independent standard candle method for Hubble constant measurement, supporting the local universe value over the Planck inference.

Findings

H$_0$ measured as 75.8 km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ with statistical errors

The measurement favors the local distance ladder over Planck values

Systematic errors reduce the tension to about 1.4 sigma

Abstract

Progressive increases in the precision of the Hubble-constant measurement via Cepheid-calibrated Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) have shown a discrepancy of $\sim 4.4\sigma$ with the current value inferred from Planck satellite measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model. This disagreement does not appear to be due to known systematic errors and may therefore be hinting at new fundamental physics. Although all of the current techniques have their own merits, further improvement in constraining the Hubble constant requires the development of as many independent methods as possible. In this work, we use SNe II as standardisable candles to obtain an independent measurement of the Hubble constant. Using 7 SNe II with host-galaxy distances measured from Cepheid variables or the tip of the red giant branch, we derive H$_0= 75.8^{+5.2}_{-4.9}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ (statistical errors only). Our value favours that obtained from the conventional distance ladder (Cepheids + SNe Ia) and exhibits a difference of 8.4 km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ from the Planck $+\Lambda$CDM value. Adding an estimate of the systematic errors (2.8 km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$) changes the $\sim 1.7\sigma$ discrepancy with Planck $+\Lambda$CDM to $\sim 1.4\sigma$. Including the systematic errors and performing a bootstrap simulation, we confirm that the local H$_0$ value exceeds the value from the early Universe with a confidence level of 95%. As in this work we only exchange SNe II for SNe Ia to measure extragalactic distances, we demonstrate that there is no evidence that SNe Ia are the source of the H$_0$ tension.