The Hubble Constant from Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances

TL;DR

This paper measures the Hubble constant using infrared surface brightness fluctuation distances for 63 galaxies observed with HST, achieving a precise estimate consistent with other recent methods and discussing future improvements with JWST.

Contribution

It provides a new measurement of H_0 using IR SBF distances calibrated with Cepheid and TRGB methods, demonstrating consistency and potential for high precision.

Findings

H_0 = 73.3 ± 0.7 (stat) ± 2.4 (sys) km/s/Mpc

IR SBF distances are consistent with Cepheid and TRGB calibrations

Future JWST observations could reduce systematic uncertainties below 2%

Abstract

We present a measurement of the Hubble constant $H_0$ from surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distances for 63 bright, mainly early-type galaxies out to 100 Mpc observed with the Wide Field Camera 3 Infrared Channel (WFC3/IR) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The sample is drawn from several independent HST imaging programs using the F110W bandpass of WFC3/IR. The majority of galaxies are in the 50 to 80 Mpc range and come from the MASSIVE galaxy survey. The median statistical uncertainty on individual distance measurements is 4%. We construct the Hubble diagram with these IR SBF distances and constrain $H_0$ using {four} different treatments of the galaxy velocities. For the SBF zero point calibration, we use both the existing tie to Cepheid variables, updated for consistency with the latest determination of the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud from detached eclipsing binaries, and a new tie to the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) calibrated from the maser distance to NGC4258. These two SBF calibrations are consistent with each other and with theoretical predictions from stellar population models. From a weighted average of the Cepheid and TRGB calibrations, we derive $H_0=73.3{\,\pm\,}0.7{\,\pm\,}2.4$ km/s/Mpc, where the error bars reflect the statistical and systematic uncertainties. This result accords well with recent measurements of $H_0$ from Type~Ia supernovae, time delays in multiply lensed quasars, and water masers. The systematic uncertainty could be reduced to below 2% by calibrating the SBF method with precision TRGB distances for a statistical sample of massive early-type galaxies out to the Virgo cluster measured with the James Webb Space Telescope.