A 5% measurement of the Hubble constant from Type II supernovae

TL;DR

This study uses Type II supernovae to measure the Hubble constant, finding results consistent with local measurements and slightly differing from Planck's cosmic microwave background inference, thus contributing to the Hubble tension debate.

Contribution

It provides an independent measurement of H0 using Type II supernovae, showing no significant difference from Cepheid-based methods and supporting the persistence of the Hubble tension.

Findings

H0 measured as 75.4 km/s/Mpc with Type II supernovae

Results are consistent with local measurements

Disagreement with Planck's value at about 2 sigma

Abstract

The most stringent local measurement of the Hubble-Lema\^itre constant from Cepheid-calibrated Type Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia) differs from the value inferred via the cosmic microwave background radiation ({\it Planck}$+\Lambda$CDM) by $\sim 5\sigma$. This so-called "Hubble tension" has been confirmed by other independent methods, and thus does not appear to be a possible consequence of systematic errors. Here, we continue upon our prior work of using Type II supernovae to provide another, largely-independent method to measure the Hubble-Lema\^itre constant. From 13 SNe~II with geometric, Cepheid, or tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) host-galaxy distance measurements, we derive H$_0= 75.4^{+3.8}_{-3.7}$\,km\,s$^{-1}$\,Mpc$^{-1}$ (statistical errors only), consistent with the local measurement but in disagreement by $\sim 2.0\sigma$ with the {\it Planck}$+\Lambda$CDM value. Using only Cepheids ($N=7$), we find H$_0 = 77.6^{+5.2}_{-4.8}$\,km\,s$^{-1}$\,Mpc$^{-1}$, while using only TRGB ($N=5$), we derive H$_0 = 73.1^{+5.7}_{-5.3}$\,km\,s$^{-1}$\,Mpc$^{-1}$. Via 13 variants of our dataset, we derive a systematic uncertainty estimate of 1.5\,km\,s$^{-1}$\,Mpc$^{-1}$. The median value derived from these variants differs by just 0.3\,km\,s$^{-1}$\,Mpc$^{-1}$ from that produced by our fiducial model. Because we only replace SNe~Ia with SNe~II -- and we do not find statistically significant difference between the Cepheid and TRGB H$_0$ measurements -- our work reveals no indication that SNe~Ia or Cepheids could be the sources of the "H$_0$ tension." We caution, however, that our conclusions rest upon a modest calibrator sample; as this sample grows in the future, our results should be verified.